


Once and For All

by prolixdreams



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 10, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angel Castiel, Blink and you'll miss it, Canon Compliant, Coda, Demon Dean, Demon Dean Winchester, Endings, Epilogue, Eventual Romance, F/M, Human Castiel, M/M, Nice Lucifer, in the style of the show, just a little romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-25
Updated: 2014-06-07
Packaged: 2018-01-26 10:57:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 23,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1685828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prolixdreams/pseuds/prolixdreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Dean, in an effort to make something good out of the whole demon situation, forgets that power comes at a price. </p><p>In which Sam uncovers the secrets that have nearly snapped the world in half, and finds the most unlikely allies to save his brother before he is lost to darkness completely. </p><p>In which Castiel finally understands what to do with free will: Not what you have to, but what you want to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Good news & Bad news (Prologue)

Sam drags the match along the side of the box, drops it into the bowl.

Waits.

It's just when he's pretty well fed up with waiting that he is startled by the sudden appearance, like a man staring into a toaster before breakfast.

"Sam." It comes out of Crowley heavy, with sigh behind it. "You do have my phone number, don't you?"

"Alright, so, what's it going to be?" Sam stands with his jaw set, his feet spread apart, his hands palm-out. He is certain of his road, concealing nothing. "How are we gonna do this?"

"You're drunk." Crowley points out.

"So what? What do you care? I know you can bring him back, you know I'm gonna do whatever I have to do--

"It would be terribily uncivilized of me," Crowley says, walking to the edge of the circle, "to make a deal with you. I mean, look at yourself, you wouldn't even remember it in the morning. And then of course, there's the other reason."

Sam frowns the crease between his brows into more of a chasm. "Other reason?"

"I've got good news and bad news, which would you like first?"

This throws Sam wholly off-balance. "The... bad news, I guess?"

"Are you sure?"

"No?"

"It sounds better with the good news first." Crowley offers.

"Whatever." Sam hurries.

"Dean is... well, he's not exactly dead. In that if you go up there now, you'll find him walking and talking, or in his case, swaggering and complaining."

"I... he... did you..." Sam's heart freezes, restarts, and flutters. Hot hope rises from his belly and he struggles to push it down. "What's the bad news?"

Crowley visibly winces as he says, "He might be... a bit of a demon."

"Crowley, I swear, if you--"

"Down, boy." Crowley's face remains neutral, but he still takes a sizeable step back. "I didn't do it, I didn't mean for it to be done, I didn't expect it to happen. Not guilty."

Sam's jaw tenses and relaxes several times. "What are you gonna do? I mean, you're gonna fix it, right? You still made him get the mark in the first place." He says with a stiff finger-jab in Crowley's direction.

"I'm not his nanny." Crowley protests. "I led the horse to water. He drank all by himself. That said, It is a situation that I will be, shall we say, monitoring. Understood?"

Sam purses his lips, but ultimately has little choice but to nod and scuff a gap into the devil's trap on the floor.

"Much obliged." Crowley says, leaving nothing but air behind where he'd stood. 

 


	2. That Voodoo You Do

"Let me guess," Is the first thing Crowley says into the phone when he picks it up. "The squirrel's feeling squirrely. Am I right?"

"There's gotta be something you can do." Dean says through gritted teeth.

"Have you tried doing that voodoo you two generally do? You know, _the family business_?" Crowley draws out the last two words with as much sardonic dryness as he can muster.

"It's not enough." The force of Dean's angry sigh into the phone is enough to make Crowley pull his hand away from his ear. " _It_ feels worse than ever."

Crowly teases, "Well we could handcuff you and lock you in a trap in the basement for awhile. I know you two are fond of that one."

"Wait, that's it." Dean says. "We just about cured _you_ , right? So Sammy could just--"

"Even if it posed no danger to Sam at all, which isn't the case," Crowley cuts in, "I still wouldn't advise it."

"Oh yeah, why?"

"You're still gonna have the mark, dummy. Which'll just kill you again, and reanimate you again. In case you're imagining that'll be fun, it won't be. I've got a better idea. I think you'll like it. Meet me at -- are you teleporting yet?"

"What?"

"So no."

Crowley hangs up. Dean frowns at his phone for only a few seconds before he feels a hand on his shoulder and the world does flips.

  
* * *

  
The hall is long and dimly lit with flourescents that buzz at what Dean images must be the most annoying frequency imaginable.

"Where the hell are we?" Dean grunts.

"Yes." Crowley answers, earning him a completely unamused look from Dean, who follows him from one hall to the next for what feels like an uncomfortably long time.

Finally, Crowley pulls a keyring from his pocket and tries a couple before he finds the right one for one of the hundreds or thousands of seemingly identical doors. The second it starts to open, they hear rattling, roaring, swearing in a hundred different languages from every direction.

"After you." Crowley offers with a gesture into the dark, noisy room beyond.

"You're joking, right?"

Crowley rolls his eyes. "Suit yourself." He says, preceding Dean through the door.

He claps twice, prompting the enormous space to be filled with light from the floodlamps that line the distant ceiling. Stacked three stories high in grids along every expansive wall are what look like plexiglass boxes about seven feet to a side.

In every single one, there is a demon.

"The hell is this?" Dean frowns, tensing, getting ready to attack should Crowley be planning what Dean thinks he is.

"Call it a peace offering."

Confusion plays on Dean's face.

Crowley elaborates: "You have a problem: You want to kill stuff. I have a problem: I need to put a little fear in the common folk."

"So you think I'm just gonna kill people you don't like 'cause you say so?" Dean rankles.

"I think you're gonna kill them because want to. Take a look around, Dean. What have they all got in common? Every last one. Tell me if you see any... familiar faces."

Dean takes a few halting steps into the room and scans the transparent cells. It isn't long before the memories come flooding back and his blood heats nearly to a boil. He swallows, bites his lip, and when he blinks, his eyes go black as coal.

"See, I've gone and done the legwork for you. All of Alistair's men -the ones you haven't killed already, anyway- right here, on a silver platter. Everyone who ever got a turn at slicing and dicing the last time you were down here."

"Why? What's the catch?"

"No catch. Remember what I said? Hell is complicated. Word gets around. _Winchester_ is the monster under the monster's bed. It's all very delightfully intimidating. Good for business. Have a little fun, for once."

"I'm not gonna do your dirty work." Dean growls, balling his hands into fists, trying to hide the glorious electric rage that courses through him when he looks into the eyes of any one of these almost endless prisoners.

"Have it your way." Crowley shrugs. "But in case you change your mind..."

He touches Dean's forehead. Dean's head spins for a moment, and then settles with the bright new knowledge of exactly how to reach this spot. A cold key is being pressed into his palm, and then all at once, he is on Earth, in the bunker, standing over the same bed he no longer needs to sleep in.

Dean tries to go about his day, but every time he puts his hand in his pocket, that fucking key is there, cold and heavy and reminding him of what he could have, what he could feel. He goes outside, throws it into the grass, and walks away, but the next time he reaches into his pocket, there it is again.

He wants to go for a drive, but thanks to his own delightful precautions, he can't even _touch_ his baby. She's so well protected it practically hurts to look at her. He wants to hunt, but Sammy keeps saying things like "I'm not sure that's such a good idea, Dean." and "Isn't that sort of like giving heroin to an addict?"

By 2 A.M., Sam is asleep, the bunker is still and silent, and Dean is starting to sweat. He didn't know demons could feel sick, feel dizzy, but he does. He scratches his arm and watches the skin turn pink around the mark, which goes entirely undisturbed.

Fuck it. It's killing demons, isn't it? That can't be so bad, he justifies.

Almost before he even realizes what he's doing, the room is dissolving around him and he's turning the cold, heavy key in the lock it was made for.

  
* * *

  
Sam wakes to the sound of whistling and the smell of bacon. He frowns through closed eyes, trying to pinpoint the where and the what, and finds that the answers are down the hall, toward the kitchen, and _Ramble On._

Dean.

Dean whistling.

Dean whistling Led Zeppelin and cooking.

Sam feels like a little rabbit's in his chest, thumping at his ribcage. Do people whistle when they want to murder? You can't whistle and cook when you're on fire with rage can you? He's out the door and down the hall in a record few steps and finds Dean standing over a hissing, spattering pan.

"You might wanna put a shirt on if you're gonna get any closer to the stove." Dean remarks, one side of his mouth upturned in a half smile the like of which Sam feels like hasn't seen in a thousand years.

"...Dean?"

"You always did have a weird sixth sense about waking up when the bacon was done."

"Dean."

Finally, Dean turns around. His eyes are as green as ever, his face is clean, he even shaved. Do demons grow hair? Sam wonders idly. He looks at the calendar on the kitchen wall - still 2014.

Sam purses his lips and looks Dean up and down. "Did something... happen?"

"Like what?"

"Oh, I don't know, like you taking some kind of magic anti murder pill?" Sam's getting indignant now, what does he mean _like what_ , like he doesn't notice a difference? "Are you hiding something? Why aren't you, you know..."

"Cranky?" Dean supplies helpfully, removing the last of the bacon and cracking eggs into the hot, fatty pan.

"Yeah. That."

"I... Crowley gave me some advice." Dean says, posture going suddenly stiff.

"What kind of advice?" Sam sits down slowly at the kitchen table while Dean plates up breakfast, obviously hiding something, and the whole scene suddenly feels like a carnival fun-mirror version of far too many mornings he had as a kid.

"Just uh, you know, demon stuff. It's no big deal, don't worry about it." He says quickly, putting a plate in front of Sam and sitting down himself.

"Dean, don't... what did he say? What aren't you telling me?"

Dean sucks in air fast. "I don't want to talk about it, okay?" Rage flashes through his body, tensing his shoulders, and when he blinks twice fast, Sam sees a split second of black.

"Fine." Sam says cautiously. "But uh, can you even eat--"

_"SHIT!"_ Dean spits violently, staring down at the bacon on his plate like it's a live snake and fanning his mouth with one hand. "What the fuck kind of bacon did you buy?"

"Uh, organic?" Sam can only suppress the laugh for but so long, watching Dean drink milk out of the carton.

"Fuck." Dean pants.

"Well..." Sam suggests, "I was gonna say, it is pretty salty. I gotta ask, what does it taste like?"  
Dean takes another long drink of the milk before answering. "Like taking a bite out of a jalapeño."

"Hey you want some salt on your eggs?" Sam snickers as he picks up the shaker and threatens Dean's plate.

"Bitch." Dean says.

Sam takes a breath that's almost a gasp of surprise, and then relaxes into a smile that feels foreign on his lips. "Jerk."

  
* * *

 

The crowd of faces and voices is reaching unmanageable proportions. This is the last card the imprisoned Metatron holds: Only he knows how to fix the veil. Hannah wishes more than anything that she could lift off the strange and unsteady ground and search from the air, but there is only pain and loss where her wings once sprang shining from her back.

Fear prickles up her arms and down her back as beleageaured souls clutch at her hands and clothes. The mist is cold on her skin, and it makes the task she's been given feel completely impossible. She imagined that Dean Winchester's soul would glow, shine, howl, do something special, something identifiable. But if he's lost in the veil, he's just like everyone else.

She breathes through her irritation that Castiel was so insistent about this in the first place. _Dean Winchester is saved_ , she remembers the bellow, with an almost imperceptible roll of her eyes. She can see how Hester, Naomi, and so many others had come to resent the man: how could one human be the cause of so much toil and consternation?

He isn't here. She is as certain as she can be that he isn't here. Nevertheless, she makes a final pass, tearing her garments away from the clutches of the lost and the frightened. Fixing this needs to be their first priority, not dropping everything to look for one dead soul.

He isn't here.

She moves slow on her return, and hesitates outside the door to Metatron's old office, where Castiel said he'd be tidying up.

She doesn't want to deliver the news, because the fact that he isn't there, isn't in the veil, isn't held back from entering _heaven_ carries with it a dreadful weight, a thoroughly unpleasant implication she is fairly certain that Castiel won't take well.

It has felt like an age that she's stood here, fist held inches from the heavy wooden door, when she finally raps a few times on it.

"Come in." Says Castiel's muffled voice from inside.

Castiel had not ordered her to conduct the search, but rather he had asked it has a favor. He had pleaded with her not to do it if she didn't want to, but it had just felt alien to her - has he really strayed so far from what an angel was meant to be, that he thinks he could give her a choice in the matter, and she could use it?

Of course she was going to do it. Whether he wants to be a leader or not, she thinks, he is. Maybe he doesn't have as much choice as he believes _he_ does.

After a deep breath, she slips through the door and closes it behind her.

Castiel has defied her expectations once again.

She finds him sitting in Metatron's chair, tan coat tossed casually over its back, white sleeves rolled up to the elbows that rest softly on the desk. His forearms frame a grisly scene, however: Two objects that, when placed beside one another, are enough to make Hannah gasp a little.

Her noise causes him to look up.

"I..." She stutters, looking from the desk to Castiel's face and back again. "He... Sorry, that's very distracting." She opts to look away altogether, focusing on a bookshelf against one wall. "I searched the veil thoroughly. His soul is... not there. I'm sorry, Castiel."

"You're certain?" He says, eyes fixed on the objects on the desk.

"Completely." She answers. "You... know what that means."

Slowly, Castiel nods his head.

"What are you going to do?" Hannah asks, though she knows the answer.

"Hannah. It was never my grace to begin with." At least he looks up and his eyes meet hers, blue eyes burning softly like coals in a dying fire. He lets out a breath he didn't realize he was holding. "Will you do me one more favor?"

She finds herself nodding, before she has a chance to say she'd rather not.

"Take me to a crossroads, with this." He puts a box on the table.

"Don't you want to find your grace, Castiel? I thought you wanted to be an angel." She protests, searching his face, looking for something she can recognize, and finding nothing at all.

"I do. But if there's anything I learned from Dean, it's that you don't always get to where you wanted to go, but..." he swallows and blinks and he wonders if she knows, "But you often end up where you need to be. Do you understand, Hannah?" He makes a point of saying her name.

She _doesn't_ really understand, but for some reason, she nods again.

Castiel opens the vial on the table in front of him. Hannah looks away. He picks up the angel blade and presses it to his throat.


	3. Gather No Moss

Dean is gone, and Sam is angry.

He's not angry with Dean for seeming to vanish into thin air at random, or for spending more and more time that way. He's worried, yes, but not angry.

Rather, Sam is angry with himself.

That morning in the kitchen was so strange. The first moment that Sam had seen Dean's black eyes, he had wanted to stay cold, to keep his distance, to make sure that the "new Dean" could do as little damage as possible. He had rationalized that Dean, as he had been before the mark, had already dragged them down as far as they could go. That it couldn't possibly get any worse.

That, he realizes now, may have been his first mistake. Since when could anything in Sam Winchester's life not get any worse? He coughs out something like a grim laugh at the very idea.

It had just been so strange. He can still see the smile on Dean's face - he frowns in concentration, trying to figure out if it was dream, or a hallucination, but no matter how he turns it over in his mind, he is certain it happened. That for a few moments, Dean was back, and not just Dean, but Sam too - the Sam he wishes he could be again.

He catches a glimpse of himself, a reflection in a dark window, and clenches his fist, burying his nails in his palm to keep from punching the glass. And then he wraps his fingers around the bottle instead, and tips it back, opening his throat, a well deserved burn searing soft tissues as the liquor slips down.

When he tries to make it down the hall, toward that stupid kitchen, he has to put one hand against the wall to steady his sway. He leans hard against the doorframe. Sam doesn't see the empty, cold, dark, room with the stainless steel and the ancient fridge. He sees light, he feels warmth, he smells bacon.

He sinks against the woodwork until he is seated, bent and curled in the kitchen doorway. The bottle tips back again, the glass clacking against his teeth, but nothing is left, save a little drop that rolls down he inside and falls onto his tongue. He sighs, and he can smell his own noxious breath.

_Bitch._

_Jerk._

In a moment of self indulgence, he imagines another world, one that he didn't ruin - one with spouses, and children who get to sit on the knee of both grandparents. One where he grew up with a mother, instead of being the reason she was taken from Dean.

The worst part is that it's only now that he feels that seed of forgiveness beginning to grow. Now that Dean isn't gone, per se, but just out of reach - whatever he's doing (that he won't tell Sam about) isn't helping the way it seemed to at first, not really. He goes away, he comes back, he smiles, and then he turns again, angers at the slightest thing, and then vanishes.

Kinda like dad.

That gets another throaty, painful laugh.

Sam is tired. He laughs again, remembering that he's the only one around here who needs to sleep these days.

He puts his head back against the wood and paint and lets his eyes fall shut.

 

* * *

 

"Enjoying my little theme park, I see?" Crowley waits until the last one is dead and takes a few strides toward Dean, careful to keep his distance, like he might be with a wild animal.

Dean whips around, eyes matte like darkest velvet for just a moment before he blinks it away.

"You don't have to feel self conscious around me." Crowley smirks.

"Oh yeah? Now that I think about it, why haven't I ever seen your eyes?" Dean's walking toward him, step by step. His rage has been tempered but not abated, and its spotlight is turned on Crowley. "And how come you don't look like anybody else?"

Crowley tenses. "What do mean?"

"Your... face. It's different. It's not..."

"Don't hate me because I'm beautiful." Crowley defuses. Dean doesn't laugh, but he doesn't advance either. "Anyway, I've got a special job for you."

"Actually." Dean says, "I've been thinking."

Crowley's eyebrows go up.

Dean goes on, "What exactly do you do?"

"I don't take your meaning."

"Around here. Hell. What is it you do? Ruling, and all that?" Dean probes. "Because for all your talk about it being complicated, you sure have a lot of folks you want _controlled_." He sweeps his arm around at the room. "So if you've got me on control duty, what is it you actually do?"

The corner of Crowley's mouth quirks up. "You think I'm eating bonbons and drinking Glencraig with swimsuit models, is that it? Because there is that, but-"

"Just that if this is such a pain in the ass, why do you keep doing it? Why not hand it off? Shit, why even bother fighting Abaddon at all? Just to survive?"

"One has to wonder," Crowley's voice is even, cool, but there is something white-hot at its core that leaves Dean unsettled, "what sort of contemplations would lead you to these sorts of interests. Perhaps you're right. Maybe I ought to take care of my own... _control business._ "

"Hold on, now." Dean says. Did Crowley get... bigger? Something about him makes Dean want to take a step back all of a sudden.

Crowley locks eyes with him. "Now you want to do the job?"

"Not for you." Dean says.

"Of course not." He hides his smile by turning around. "For fun. Come with me, then."

  
* * *

  
_"You're not alone."_

_The voice is miles away and inches from Sam's ear all at once. It is a whisper and a shout, a song and a growl, a caress and a slap. It curls around him until it coalesces into something soft and slippery._

_"They took me from you, I wonder how much you remember now."_

_Sam listens, falling deep into the sound._

_"I'm sorry, Sam. If I had known, I would never have hurt you. For what you went through, the price you paid for my folly, the price you still pay, I'm so sorry. So much has become clear, so much unnecessary pain, so many regrets. I cannot take your suffering from you, Sam, but perhaps I can help."_

_In the interminable darkness, Sam feels it - the touch of a finger between his eyes._

_He is back in the dark kitchen, fingers twined around the neck of an empty bottle, but he feels strange._

_"Sam, I hear your fear. I hear you breaking apart inside, certain you've gone mad."_

_Sam looks around. For a moment, there is no one, and then he blinks into existence, sitting cross-legged on the linoleum floor as if in solidarity with Sam. He is not a large man, physically, but his presence is enormous, room-filling. Gray-blue eyes glimmer above a wicked grin, and above them in turn rests a mussed shock of sandy hair._

_Lucifer._

_"You--"_

_"Don't be afraid." He puts a soft finger to Sam's mouth. "You are not mad. It was I who was mad, once, who dragged you into my madness."_

_"Even if I were to believe you were real," Sam scoots backward a little, "How could I trust you?"_

_"You have to listen, Sam." Urgency creeps into Lucifer's tone as his body fades and flickers like an old light bulb. "You cannot trust your brother. He is walking down the darkest path. He's going to do a lot of damage, before the end. You have to stop him. I can help you, but he must be stopped. Do you understand?"_

_Sam's face hardens. "Proof. If you're you, if you're real, then you know me inside and out. You know I'm not just going to nod along."_

_Lucifer nods. "You will meet an old friend: Someone who can confirm my story. Someone I believe you trust."_

_A long sigh escapes Sam._

"Sam." _It's not Lucifer. Lucifer flickers out and disappears for good this time._ "Sammy." _It's a low, panicky rumble._

"Sammy, wake up, wake up, come on, you're not dead, you're just drunk, wake up."

Sam's eyes flutter open. "Dean?"

"Who were you expecting, the tooth fairy? What are you doing on the floor?"

“I was…” He looks at the empty bottle, his hand loosely grasping its neck. I drank that. He thinks. He remembers the crack of the cap as he twisted it off – it had been sealed. _I drank all of that._ He wonders if he should even be alive. “What time is it?”

“What? It’s like 5 AM.”

“Are you sure?” Just a couple of hours, he thinks, but he doesn’t feel drunk at all, not so much as a buzz.

“Yeah, you need some help?” Dean stands and offers his arm. He eyes the bottle again, harshness draining from his voice. “Let’s get you to bed, huh?”  
  
“Dean, I’m fine.”

“Yeah, I bet, c’mon.”

“No, I mean it.” He stands by himself with ease, even lifting one foot and bouncing on the other, balance impeccable. A little smile sparks the corners of his mouth. “I don’t even have a headache. I feel… great, actually.”

Dean frowns. “What are you talking about, didn’t you drink…” He points. “That?”

“Yeah, it’s a…” Sam doesn’t say the word that chills his blood. _A miracle._ Instead, he says, “You know it’s funny. I had the weirdest dream.”

“Since when do you dream when you’re blacked out?”

“Yeah.” Sam says.

“Well? What happened?” Dean motions to Sam, like _get on with it._

“It was Lucifer.”

“Fuck.” Dean says, looking at the ground. “I thought Cas fixed that? No more nightmares?”

“That’s just it; it wasn’t a nightmare, Dean.” He backs up and leans against the corridor wall. “He was kind.”

“The devil was kind.” Dean repeats in dry disbelief.

“He said he’d been foolish, and he was sorry, and he wanted to help. And he told me—” Sam isn’t sure he should say that part.

“Told you what.” Dean rolls his eyes.

_Might as well._ Sam takes a deep breath and a shrug. “Told me I shouldn’t trust you.”

“You know it was just a dream, right?”

“Well, I asked him for proof.” Sam says warily.

“Yeah, and?”

“And he said I was going to meet an old friend.” Sam slips one hand into the pocket of the pants he fell asleep in. “Someone I could trust.”

The pocket crinkles.

“Sounds like pretty typical dream bullshit.” Dean hand-waves.

But Sam isn’t listening. He’s pinching a piece of paper inside his pocket between forefinger and thumb. He’s drawing it out. He’s expecting a receipt, or a page out of his notepad.

He is not expecting a recipe.

It only takes a scan of the first few ingredients to know that this it’s not chocolate chip cookies. He recognizes a few of the bases, and a little of the Enochian – he remembers them from spells for summoning angels, the basic setup being the same with some special ingredients depending on who you wanted to drag around. But the sigil at the bottom is completely unknown to him.

“Earth to Sammy. What’s so interesting?”

Sam puts the paper back his pocket and purses his lips. “Dean, what are you hiding from me?”

“Oh come on.”

“Don’t come on me.” Sam points a finger at Dean.

“You’re telling me you trust a dream you had, a dream about Lucifer, more than you trust your own brother?” One side of Dean’s mouth crinkles up in disgust. “Just because—”

“No, Dean. You were acting shady long before this.”

“I thought we were cool.”

“You were _dying,_ okay? What was I supposed to do, say _I still don’t forgive you?_ ”

“Do you?” Dean asks, more quietly.

“That’s beside the point.”

“Well do you?”

“Dean, this wasn’t in my pocket when I started drinking. I don’t know this spell.” Sam grips the paper tight.

“How do you know you didn’t just write it when you were blacked out and you were too wasted to write anything that made sense?” Dean raises his voice above Sam’s.

“If I was so wasted I was writing spells for no reason, why don’t I have a hangover?” Sam raises his voice in turn. “You wouldn’t trust me, if our positions were switched.”

“You’re reaching.” Dean says, leaning into Sam’s space, letting his eyes go black, not bothering to return them to green. “That or you’re so desperate to turn on me you’ll _really_ side with _anyone._ But I guess it’s always been that way, hasn’t it Sam? You’re always ready to show sympathy and fight me to save the monsters, until I’m the monster. I’m the only one you won’t even _try_ to connect with, to give the benefit of the doubt to.”

“I’m starting to think maybe I know you too well for the benefit of the doubt anymore.” Sam’s voice drops as he takes a retreating step back.

"Is that so? Then maybe I shouldn't bother to be worthy of it." Dean opens his fist toward Sam.

The world seems to leap and run away from Sam, but long before he hits the wall he knows the truth. He's been here, flying seemingly impossible back through the air too many times to spend even a single second confused. He tips his head forward to protect his neck and skull.

So many times, but never at Dean's hand.

Dean was always pressed against the wall next to him, or creeping up on the monster from behind.

Not this time.

He hears his back crack when it impacts with the wood and cement at the end of the corridor. Hot pain blooms in his side - is the rib cracked, or broken? He tries to call out Dean's name, but the force of the push is pressing down on his throat.

Sam lets his arms and legs go slack. If Dean's going to let go, he doesn't want any more injury than necessary, and if he's not, he doesn't want to waste his oxygen. He closes his eyes and concentrates on what Jess taught him when he told her about the panic attacks: feel and release. Feel and release. He can't imagine that Dean's so far gone he'd do any more damage than a fistfight would cause. He wraps himself in that belief.

He hits the ground.

"Say it was just a dream." Dean growls, standing over him.

Sam coughs, breathes, and then cooperates: "It was just a dream. OK? You're right. I scribbled the paper when I was blacked out. It was stupid of me to even think anything else. I just drank too much and had a dream."

By the time he looks up, Dean is gone again, and he's making a beeline for the car, paper clutched firmly in hand.

 

  
* * *

 

 


	4. Those Who Falter and Those Who Fall

Falling, as it turns out, is easier the second time. No wings to slow you down, Castiel thinks. It is a dark humor that takes him by surprise, a voice in his head that hardly seems to sound like his own at all.

He fills his lungs slowly, and just as slowly empties them again. It’s a little bitter, being human again, even if the comforting weight of the satchel at his side is there to remind him that he’s better prepared this time. No one ever said the path would be easy or comfortable, but sitting at that desk, he’d seen it laid out as if by lamps in the darkness at his feet just the same. It isn't what he has to do, it isn't a road he was ordered to walk, not the one he _has_  to walk, nor even is it terribly sensible in the first place. He had a choice, and he made it.

She hadn't understood. He knows that the same way he knows the way out of the woods. He believes that she most likely did her best to help him get where he wanted to go, but what is the significance of human-delineated borderlines around Lebanon, Kansas to an angel?

Fortunately, he’s not lost.

It’s nearly dawn when he takes his steps, dirty and tired, past the WELCOME sign. An all-night diner by the road welcomes him. With no one else in the restaurant, he doesn't feel bad about slipping into one of the more comfortable booths by the Eastern window, to watch the sunrise while he drinks his coffee, torn between the lag of his exhaustion and the feeling that there’s no time to waste.

Still, he can’t help but close his eyes and imagine himself back. If he concentrates, he can imagine Dean and Sam sitting across the table, sniping over dietary choices, speaking in what seemed then to him like code.

Even now, the significance is mostly lost on him – if anything, it’s _more_ frustrating now, being able to pinpoint the source of a reference but unable to wrap his mind around them. He can name a hundred of these now: Thelma and Louise, deLoreans, Clarence. He doesn't know how Metatron could fail to understand that there’s more to these experiences than simply becoming a walking encyclopedia.

The waitress sets a plate of eggs and toast with a side of hash browns on the table. Before she can turn to leave, he puts his hand on her arm.

“I realize that this is going to sound very strange, and for that I apologize. I want to reassure you that there is nothing untoward about what I am about to ask you.” He says, watching sudden anxiety fill her eyes. “Where can I buy a shovel?”

He drinks the second coffee quickly and leaves a generous tip.

The town is quiet in the morning, he realizes that it’s Saturday, and he’s the only person in the hardware store. Between that and the walk through a small town carrying a shovel, he’s just about had his fill of awkwardness.

Castiel selects the intersection of two little-used dirt roads on the outskirts of the town to bury the box in his satchel, but not before making a few other preparations.

He waits.

“Well, well, well.” The soft sneer comes from behind him, just as he expected. “Isn't _this_ an interesting turn of events.”

“I thought you preferred brunettes.” Castiel says flatly to the blonde.

“That’s fashion for you, dear. Times change.” She bites back a laugh, and there's something in her face betraying something like real sympathy. “Of course, I suppose you’d know that better than anybody.”

 

* * *

  
"You've got Dean, what he hell else do you want?" Sam snaps into the mouthpiece.

"Hello to you too." Crowley says with as much affront as he can muster. "See, I'm trying to write a joke but I don't know how it ends. The beginning is, what did the moose say to the squirrel that made him go _absolutely berserk?_ "

Sam softens. "What do you mean, berserk?"

"I don't think this is a good conversation to have when you're driving."

Through the phone, Crowley can hear Sam pull over.

He taps on the passenger window. "Sir you do know it's illegal to use your mobile while you're driving."

Sam tightens his mouth and sets his jaw just so, in something Dean might call a "bitchface," one that communicates his total lack of amusement loud and clear. Regardless, he gets out of the car and walks around.

"You gotta know I have like zero patience for you right now. Ask any of your minions, it's not a good place for you to be in." Sam says, imposing in a flat, matter-of-fact sort of way.

"Your brother's killing the wrong people." Crowley cuts to the chase.

"Excuse me?"

"Yeah, our little deal? He's not sticking to the script."

"Uh, you're gonna have to run that by me again, what _deal?_ " Sam's throat goes tight.

"Aha." Crowley's eyes narrow. "Interesting. Looks like I just... how does it go? Made an ass of you and me? How about that."

"Care to fill me in, then?"

"It's not rocket science. He had a hard-on for killing, I had a list of suitable candidates."

"And you're telling me," Sam says, gesturing sharply, like he's reprimanding a child, "That you didn't think for a second that there was any way that could go wrong?"

"Seemed like a good idea at the time. And let's be frank, it was, until _someone_ went around gabbing about his bad dreams."

"It wasn't a dream." Sam says quietly. "At least, I don't think--"

"You must be joking." Anger and highway noise bring Crowley's voice to a shout. "What, do you think those assholes get _cell reception_  in the cage? You cannot have spoken to Lucifer, do you understand? It's not--"

Sam rudely shoves the strange paper into Crowley's hand, and watches his face twist from fury to confusion.

"Not possible." Crowley finishes in a mutter under his breath. "Shit."

"It's not so bad." Sam explains. "He said some stuff, I think something's changed."

"You believe Lucifer when he says he's changed, and you're chewing me out for cutting a deal with Dean?!" Crowley's incredulity is palpable. "What are you, a battered housewife?"

"What do you know about the... thing?" Sam gestures at the paper in Crowley's hands. "I know it's got some stuff in common with angel summoning rituals, but that's about it."

"Yeah, well, even if old Lucy _has_ mellowed out, he'd still be pretty far behind the times. You can't summon dead angels." He presses the paper back into Sam's palm.

"Dead?" Sam frowns.

"Last I checked, your old archangel pal was a wing-shaped stain."

"Gabriel?" The name comes from the back of Sam's throat. "This..."

"Don't."

"This summons Gabriel?"

"Don't do it. Don't go there. Don't even think about it." Crowley warns.

"You gotta help me." Sam says.

"And he did it." He puts a hand to his forehead. "Do you listen? Do you have the power of hearing? You. Cannot. Summon. Dead. Angels. Not that I'd have any interest even if you could, last thing I need is another archangel about, but for your own good I'm telling you, back away from this."

"No." Sam says, swallowing and balling his hands into fists.

Crowley releases a long-suffering sigh. "Very well, if you're determined to get your hopes up about something stupid, I might as well profit off your jackassery, so how about this? You get that renegade sibling of yours safely trapped, and I'll hunt down..." He looks at the list again. "Pigeon fangs? Snake's fingernails? A double ended dildo made of solid alexandrite? For the love of Pete. Where were you even going that you thought were going to find--you know what, never mind. It's fine. Do we have a bargain?"

"If you want Dean trapped, why can't you trap him yourself?"

"You know me, I like to stay out of harm's way, unlike _some_ people I know."

Little as Sam wants to play into whatever scheme he imagines Crowley is cooking, he also can't help but feel the hopelessness of it. Inadvertently he takes a second and wonders which of those Enochian words he didn't recognize means dildo. If it were any other angel, he would be forgetting all about it right about now, but Gabriel? If anything, this only strengthens his faith.

And if Dean is running around wreaking havoc, isn't it his responsibility to do something, anyway?

"Fine."

Crowley and the list do their vanishing act.

Sam turns the car around.

 

* * *

  
It doesn't take that much, really.

With every mile marker Sam had passed on his way back to the bunker, he'd had a new plan, a new scheme, a new idea about how he was going to ensnare Dean, reviewing each one in his head, revising, editing, trying to make the perfect procedure.

But when he'd arrived, pulled up outside, paced the hall, and then stopped at the door to Dean's room...

He had realized he'd been going about it all wrong.

He'd been going about it like it was a hunt.

And now that he has Dean fettered, he knows why. He feels dark and dirty, somehow poisoned. This way was easy, effective, efficient, safe. Also, horrible.

The new plan had been painfully simple: Splatter himself in blood - matched to his type, no less, since he'd realized he was unsure just what demon senses would allow Dean to perceive. Lay down in the middle of the most beautiful and intricate devil's trap he'd ever drawn in his life, and call Dean.

"Dean..." Sam had spoken hoarsely, like a man trying to convince his boss that he's much too sick to work. "Come back, please, I'm in the bunker, in the library. You gotta help me."

And Sam hadn't known, and Dean wouldn't have noticed, but in that moment, Dean's eyes had faded from black back to green, without him even trying. A kernel of something buried deep had broken open beneath the soil.

"What happened?" Dean had said. "What's wrong?"

"It's..." Sam paused. He hadn't actually considered the scenario. He went with the most plausible option, largely disregarding whether it threw anyone else under the metaphorical bus. "C...Crowley. He was so angry..."

"I'll get him."

"No... Don't leave me alone, please."

Dean had been back like a flash, before Sam had even expected him, kneeling down at Sam's side, touching his shoulders, his face.

It had been too easy.

Sam wants to throw up.

"This is fucked up." Dean says. "This is some fucked up shit, you know that, right?"

Sam doesn't answer, doesn't even face him.

"C'mon man, let me out. What did I even do to you, really?"

Sam pours himself a drink.

"Are you fucking kidding me right now?" Dean protests. "Is this how far-- Is this where we are? My own brother, locking me up, won't even talk to me."

Sam's eyes burn, but he blinks back the hot tears building there.

"What does it matter if I'm a demon, huh? What's that different, really? If anything it's better, isn't it? I can sure as hell hunt better -- shit, I'm practically invincible."

Sam slams the rocks glass down on the wood of the library table. "And how, exactly, do you know that, Dean? What's the last thing we hunted? Because it sure as shit wasn't since this mess. So how do you know how strong you are?"

"OK, maybe I should have told you about the the thing."

"What thing is that?" Sam feigns ignorance aggressively.

"Oh shut up, you obviously know, don't be a dick."

Sam tosses back his head and lets out a sharp laugh, just cackles at that.

"Sammy, I'm trying to reach out to you here. Yeah, I've been in Hell, yeah, I've been killing demons, but is that so bad? I'm not Crowley's stooge, I have an agenda of my own. I think I could do good with this. I'm getting strong. What if I could keep demons off Earth? Forever? Imagine all the people we could save." His tone drops.

"Is that so?" Sam doesn't bother pouring this one, he just takes a swig right from the bottle and lets the fire drip all the way down to his belly. "What would you say, Dean? If a demon you had tied up said that to you?"

"Is this how it ends, for us?" Dean asks. "A lifetime of protecting you, of caring for you, of picking you up when you fall down, of keeping you safe, and suddenly I do one stupid thing and I'm just some _demon you have tied up_?"

"Man," Sam says, standing up and walking slowly toward the trap. "I'm glad I know what I know, Dean, because if I didn't, I'd think you were a real idiot."

"What do you know?" It comes out like a growl.

Sam stands with his sock-covered toes right at the edge of the trap. "That you don't believe a damn word you're saying. You'd say anything. You're an animal, gnawing its own leg off to escape a snare. Nothing more."

Dean looks down, pressing one palm against the ground. He mutters something, but Sam doesn't catch it.

"What was that?" He inquires.

"Maybe you're right." Dean says, without looking up. "Maybe I am an animal. But at least I'm not the prey."

Two sets of powerful arms grab at Sam's elbows, and bend his arms behind his back. He tries to turn his head around but he can't see familiar faces, just black eyes and flat expressions.

"Enough games. Let me out." Dean orders, and the two silent thugs twist Sam's arms a little harder, just for effect. One of them raises his foot and steps hard on the floor. The foundations of the bunker rattle, but the floor and trap remain intact.

The other one pats Sam down and pulls the knife out of his jacket.

"Damn." Dean says, without sarcasm, genuinely taken aback. "That's cold, man."

The guys drag Sam bodily to the edge of the trap. One forces Sam's hand around the knife and scratches a hole in the trap.

"That's better." Dean says, visibly relaxing as he swings an arm, tossing Sam to the other side of the room without a touch. "You know, Sammy, you should see this, I have a cool new trick."

Sam watches, unable to speak, as Dean presses his palms to the foreheads of the two demons he'd somehow called. They are willing, even submissive - strangely so, and Sam puzzles over that.

"What are you doing to them?" He coughs out, for real this time. "Why aren't they talking?"

"This mark is a really interesting thing." Dean remarks casually.

As he palms their heads, the two strangers' bodies tense, like every muscle in them seizing. A vivid darkness emerges from them, not smoke, but darker, deeper, like two misshapen holes in the world emerging from the very pores of their skin. It pools and eddies in the air around Dean's hands for a moment before seeping in.

For a few moments, Dean's flesh is mottled. Sam can see it on his hands and face, like a shadow moving under the surface, and then it's gone.

"Don't you agree?" Dean asks through black eyes and a cold smile.

The two bodies collapse, lifeless against the floorboards.


	5. Like the Land Split by Sea

_“No one makes_ us _do anything.”_

_Something tugs at Lucifer’s mind. It could simply be another organ failure – they've been doing that a lot, lately, but it doesn't feel that way. It feels like a golden strand, threaded through his heart, through the grace that flows inside it and holds it together, and if he were to follow the string from where he imagines it emerging from his own chest, he would find it pulled taught, and at its other end?_

_Gabriel._

_There are few things that could make him falter now. The wheels are turning and he can see it all going to plan. But when he dreamed, when he planned, when he watched it unfold in his mind’s eye, he had never imagined for a moment that he would be forced to stand against the one angel he'd imagined might see things his way._

_He isn’t naïve enough to have imagined Gabriel standing_ with _him, he knows that it is written that he won't be understood, but to force his hand like this?_

_“I know you think you’re doing the right thing, Gabriel.” He warns, “But I know where your heart truly lies.”_

_This is the way they've always spoken to each other. Riddles wrapped in lace and tied with bows, as intricate as if it were a language all its own that they could speak plain as day before any angel in Heaven and still let their truth be a secret. It was always a game, until now, but it’s gone on so long that now, when he would most like to reach out, he has no other way to relate._

_They've_ _made so many mistakes, done so much damage to one another, but they'd always come back, one way or another. What changed?_

_He feels Gabriel behind him, raising the knife. Something sparks, a sting in his eyes – are those tears? He swallows it back before he whips around and grabs ahold of the blade meant to destroy him._

_There is a hallway in his mind, long and dark. It has been there as long as he can recall, and why it comes to him now, unbidden, he cannot guess. He walks the hallway as he has done a thousand times before, but at the end, the door is locked._

_It has always been locked._

_Does Gabriel have a hallway too? He wonders, and his resolve flickers for a moment._

_“Here.” He finishes, turning his brother’s own sword against him._

_Gabriel’s fist wraps around his arm, and he brings a hand up to cradle Gabriel’s head._

_“Amateur Hocus Pocus.” Lucifer says, never breaking his eyes away. His voice wavers, but he goes on. “Don’t forget. You learned all your tricks from me, little brother.”_

_In their private tongue, these words do not taunt, rather they comfort, they reassure. Lucifer doubts that Gabriel is much for solving riddles right now – this can't be pleasant for him, to be consumed and held in stillness – but a day will come when he will understand._

_This trick, Lucifer never taught anyone._

_* * *_

“Consider it a consolation prize.” Crowley had said, when he'd handed the bag over. "I still think it's useless."

Sam had been expecting to have to fight him for it, given the failure on his end, but he'd seemed distracted and rushed, unwilling to spend much time fretting over it. If there was a touch of sympathy there, it was light enough to remain ambiguous.

He isn't sure if it’s because the bunker is special, or if his expectations were just off, but while the basement floor lights up and there’s a little rattle of the fixtures, the process just isn't as dramatic as he'd anticipated.

“You know, dickweed, I don’t know if you noticed, but you _fried my wings_ , which makes _this_ a pretty big pain in the ass, so if you could just—Oh.” Gabriel looks wan, and haggard, his bombastic former presence reduced to the stature of a diminutive, underfed vessel in a too-large sweater. He sucks a shocked breath through his teeth before adjusting his focus a bit  _upward_ and stating the obvious. “It’s you.”

“Who were you expecting?” Sam is reserved, brows flying high on a tightly controlled face.

“If this is about the thing with Castiel, I didn’t want to do it, OK?” He says, distress painted red on his face. “You have to know, I didn’t want to, I didn’t have a choice.” _No one makes_ us _do anything,_ he had once said. Hubris.

Sam sucks his teeth and breathes deep, searching himself for the patience to follow this thread instead of the one he meant to start. “Do what?”

“What do you mean?” Gabriel is blinking, crinkles forming on his forehead as he tries to find something in Sam’s eyes that will resolve the discord ringing between his ears. “Are you saying you didn’t… this isn’t about that?”

"Should I even bother asking, or should I just stand here and see how much of your foot you can fit in your mouth?" Sam folds his arms in front of him.

"I didn't hurt him. Metatron and his little stooge played me like a cheap fiddle, alright? I don't know how he found me, or where he got all that power from, but he basically stuck his hand up my ass and made me his muppet."

"It seems like he’s good at that.” Sam remarks, thinking bitterly of Castiel’s fate. “Is he alive, then?”

"Who?"

"Take your pick." Sam offers.

"Well your buddy Castiel fell. Again. When one angel loses grace, we all feel it." Gabriel is bitterly straightforward, much of the usual mirth-light in his eyes gone dim. "I haven't heard hide nor hair of Metatron in a while. Actually when I saw you, I was hoping _you'd_ done the little bugger in."

"What about Lucifer?"

"What _about_ Lucifer?" Gabriel’s palms are upturned, questioning the relevance.

"Don't play stupid. He spoke to me. Somehow. Told me to find you. That means you’re gonna have to tell me _why_ he would have done that."

"Sam Winchester, I swear to Dad, if you're messing with me right now I will find a way to kill you and make it stick for once." _You learned all your tricks from me,_ Lucifer's voice echoes off the sides of Gabriel's mind.

"He spoke to me. But he wasn't... him. Not like I remember. Something’s changed." Sam shakes his head, still unable to pull apart the restless tangle that's taken up residence there. "I know this sounds insane but he was apologizing, helping, it’s like he's in AA or something."

"Well. What do you know?" Gabriel is almost breathless. The corners of his mouth twitch up into a smirk that lights his face from within. "Pull up a chair, kiddo. This is a long story."

Gabriel reaches forward and presses two fingers to Sam’s forehead.

 

* * *

 

"Don't panic." Castiel looms over the bound demon, struggling against engraved restraints. Humanity, he has learned well, need not equal helplessness. "You may yet live. I'll let you go unharmed, provided you are able to retrieve Dean Winchester's soul or bring me someone who can."

"My lucky... Dean Winchester?!" She tips her head back and lets out a ringing laugh that bounces off nearby trees. "Soul? Wow, you're farther out of the loop than I thought! Soul. That's rich."

Castiel is thrown. "What do you mean? He's not in the veil, I--No. No, he can't possibly--"

"Be a demon? He's not just a demon; he's the HBIC - Head Bitch In Charge." She relishes the twists and contortions of Castiel's face. "I wouldn't be surprised if he took on the King himself one of these days. Hardest part of that’d be hunting Crowley down of course, though I don't blame the guy for making himself scarce. Dean Winchester's down there making Abaddon look like a kitten."

"My offer stands." Castiel swallows the bile creeping up his throat, desperately trying to force himself to accept that this is not the worst nightmare he's ever had as a human. It's worse. It's real.

"What, that you'll let me go if I give you your boyfriend's demonic phone number? You think I'm an idiot? You let me go, and then what do you think _he_ does to me? It'll be worse than that blade of yours, that's for sure."

"If that's true, I can kill you quickly, painlessly. Let that be your reward." He speaks softly but he holds her gaze.

"All things considered, that might be better than going back down there now. The way things are headed…" She breaks away into a sigh, staring into the dust of the road instead.

Castiel drops into a crouch in front of her and reaches out to lift her chin. “What way is that?”

"You don't know what it's like, now. That name nowadays, it's almost as bad as… well, you know. It’s a quick way to make anybody wince. Hell was never the most fun place to be, but the one thing you could say for it was that the fucking _Winchesters_ weren't running around. There are rumors... they're saying he wants to freeze hell."

"Freeze? What do you mean, freeze?”

"Well, you know the figure of speech, Hell frozen over? It’s possible, but not like humans think. Not a _cold_ freeze, but like, stillness. No way out. No going to Earth, no deals, no souls, nothing at all. A statue garden of nothingness."

“Is that worse?”

“You don’t understand. Demons are fire, motion, energy, hunger. Stillness is…” She reaches, searching for the word.  “It’s anathema. I know you’re not the biggest fan of demons, but let the punishment fit the crime, yeah? You want to lock us away, destroy us, fine...” She looks into his eyes, as if she could drag sympathy forcibly from them as she says in something hushed like a whisper, “Please, anything but that stillness.”

If Pandora's box had lived inside Castiel's heart, the demon's last statement is what would allow hope to fly free. If true, it could mean that there's still something left of Dean in Dean, something to save. He returns to his feet. His knuckles go white around the silvery handle of the blade.

"Very well then.” Castiel says. “Do we have a deal?”

 

* * *

 

“Where are we?” Sam asks.

“Shh.” Gabriel says. “We’re in Heaven, sort of. A memory of it, altered so it doesn’t break your pathetic mind. What you gotta understand is that angelic memories aren’t like human ones. They’re a physical thing, like sand or water or blood, and they’re tied to an angel’s grace. When we’re punished, brainwashed, they remove them and store them.”

“Sounds… creepy.” Sam imagines rows upon rows of jars, and he isn’t entirely wrong.

“You know what’s creepier?” Gabriel leads, “When a little shit kicks all the angels out of heaven and doesn’t read the fine print. Can you guess what happens to the tied memories?”

“They fall too?”

“Correctamundo. Stuff gets remembered. Secrets, lies, things that would have—" Gabriel stops to correct himself grimly. “Things that some people would have preferred stay buried, but if you ask me, should never have been forgotten in the first place. Now shut up and watch.”

_“Snake.” Michael spits. “That is what you are, and that is all you are, and all you ever will be. How dare you point the finger at me and accuse me of such ambition? Is it not_ you _that hungers for power? I have heard the song of your heart, and it is dark and strange.”_

_“My designs are not for supremacy, don’t you understand?” Lucifer explains, full of false patience._

_“But you do not wish for bliss on Earth.” Michael declares. “You, who claim to love His children, you desire them to suffer.  Heresy!”_

_“I wish for progress on Earth, you pompous cretin. These creatures are so strange, so complex, don’t you see it? Don’t you see the potential? Look down another path and bear witness to all the futures that could come to pass.”_

_“Those futures are not what Our Father has commanded us to bring to life. He wishes that they will live in peace.”_

_“If it were not His will, would I feel this knowledge, this surety? Is it not destiny that I will bring the light of knowledge to them? Is it not their birthright?”_

_“It may well kill them.” Michael points out, refusing to allow his confidence to be shaken._

_“Or it may save them from death by boredom. What is Eden, but a prison of stillness?”_

_“Stillness is Heavenly.” Michael toes the party line carefully._

_“Stillness is death!” Lucifer clenches both fists._

Sam turns to Gabriel. “As cool as this is, it’s not exactly news that these two aren’t getting along.”

“That’s not the point, nerd. Look around. Two of the most powerful angels in the cosmos are having a slapfight. What _don’t_ you see?”

“Other angels? Uh… God?”

“Bingo.”

“Are you saying…” Sam chews his lip. “God is already gone?”

“You got it. If you want to get specific about it, it was over the second you kids showed up. Nobody ever saw _Him_ again. Michael thought it was his job to take over, Lucifer wasn’t a fan, yadda yadda yadda, Lucy gets the boot.”

Sam steps back. “Wait a second, how do _you_ have this memory?”

“Ah, now here’s the link in the chain you were looking for, Sammy-boy. Lucifer _gave_ it to me. Still not sure how he did it, but I can tell you one thing: It showed up in my noggin _after_ the fall, which can only mean one thing: He had his memories taken at some point between this memory and when they threw the book at him.”

“So all that stuff he said, about being foolish, sorry, regrets…”

“That was the last puzzle piece – probably why he got you to summon me.” Gabriel adds as an aside, “Who do you think taught me to be one step ahead? He never trusted Heaven either. Anyway, I think he knows something now. Something that would have made him think twice about the whole _apocalypse_ deal.” He concludes.

“Did you get anything new?” Sam asks. “Memory-wise?”

“You think I’d let them suck on this beautiful brain?” Gabriel clutches dramatically at his head. “Hell no. Why do you think I ran off in the first place? Though I gotta say, your little Constantine-wannabe friend’ll be in for a rude awakening if he ever gets his grace back.” He adds.

“Cas?”

“ _Oh-ho-hoo_ yeah. Time was I was starting to think getting brainwashed was turning into a _hobby_ for that guy. He never was any good at the whole ‘not getting caught’ part of rebellion.”

“But…” Sam finally gets to his big question. “What does all this have to do with Dean?”

“What?” Gabriel frowns. “When did he get into this? Listen, Metatron’s had me on a leash, I’m not exactly up on the breaking news, here.”

“I don’t know what you do know, but… Dean got the Mark of Cain,” Sam watches Gabriel wince. “And Metatron killed him.”

“Let me guess, the mark was having none of that, and now he’s sporting the latest fashion in black eyes.” Gabriel shows off.

Sam’s beleaguered sigh says it all.

“We need a game plan.” Gabriel says, determination glinting in his eyes. “Knowing Cas, he’s probably using the same old phone. Let’s give him a call.”

 

* * *

 

“Hello Castiel.” Dean’s voice comes from behind, a rumbling mockery that flies right over Cas’ head, unrecognized.

Castiel nearly jumps out of his skin, but he doesn’t turn. He takes a moment and a breath to collect himself, as if he is trying to turn himself to stone, and in his firmness, allowing Dean to circle around to stand before him.

“So, you came to rescue me, is that it?” Dean shrugs. "Did you at least kill the boss before you flamed out?"

"Metatron is in prison." Looking into the black pits of Dean’s eyes makes Castiel feel as if a hole has opened beneath him. His blood chills, and his hands want to shake, but he simply stays, rooted to the Earth.

“I’m a little disappointed, Cas. I was hoping I’d get to see your uh… real-face, or whatever you call it.” He small-talks.

“It’s enough that I can see yours.” Cas speaks quietly to keep his voice steady. 

“You can?” Dean stiffens. He tries to shrug, but it doesn’t come off as casual as he’d hoped.

“It’s the same face I’ve known since I first remade it.” He feels his fear draining away, as he lifts his chin and says, “You have one hundred and three freckles, predominantly on the skin over the outer zygoma and on the nasal bone. The sides of your eyes are beginning to crease, but it’s only obvious when you become dehydrated or exhausted. You have one hundred and nineteen eyelashes on your left eye, and one hundred and twenty one on your right. Your left eyebrow contains two hundred and ninety hairs. Your right contains Two hundred eighty one.”

“Cas, this is kind of—“

“Your genetics dictate two small symmetrical gaps in the facial hair growth beneath your lower lip. Your nose has a very slight bend to the right. It had previously been broken, which actually evened it out slightly, but I did not recreate the effect, rather I rebuilt your nose in its original state. Your irises, when present, correspond approximately to Pantone 370, though perceived color can vary depending on–“

“ _Stop._ ” He’s angry, though he can’t seem to put his finger on why. Wrapped up in the darkness of that feeling, however, is a tiny glow of relief that Cas isn’t revolted after all. “I get it. You’re talking about the meat face, not the scary face.”

“Your _real_ face. Yes.” Cas declares flatly.

“Listen.” Dean grows antsy, impatient. It’s hard to meet Cas’ eyes, even as a human that Dean could destroy with the flick of his wrist, something in his stare makes Dean feel small. _It didn’t used to,_ Dean thinks. “Did you just want to summon me so you could talk about my face parts, or was there a reason?”

“Your initial guess was correct.”

“That you came to rescue me?”

“Yes.”

“Well that was a nice thought, but uh…” Dean chuckles and brings a hand up to the back of his neck. “You might have figured out I don’t exactly need saving.”

“I disagree.”

Dean rolls his eyes. It’s difficult to see, but the rest of his face does the job of communicating his irritation just fine. “If you just want to play hero, you can go do it somewhere else, with someone else.”

“In that case, I want something else.” Cas steps into Dean’s bubble, looking more the part of the stoic warrior than he did _with_ his grace, at times. “I want to make a deal.”


	6. Same Old Empty Feeling in Your Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sure you're getting sick to death of talkingtalkingtalkingtalking. This has to be the chattiest thing I've ever written. I swear there's more action on the way.

It isn't as if Castiel hadn't considered this possibility at all. It had been this nagging thought, tugging on his pant legs from the moment he landed in the woods, this hollow little drumbeat, _what if, what if, what if._ But it simply hadn't seemed likely enough to really plan for.

Wishful thinking, he realizes now. It doesn't take much review of the situation to realize that it had been perfectly likely.

Castiel rallies quickly - despite the irrational shock rattling the bars inside him, he scratches out a new path, not a major departure from the first - just a detour, he thinks, that's all.

"A deal? What? Like, for your soul?" Dean asks, certain it couldn't possibly be that. There's just no way.

Something warm and hungry swirls deep in Dean's chest at the idea, but this new instinct has too many old feelings to compete with. Against the tide of anxiety and confusion, it can't gain ground. It's hard now, in a way never used to be, to look at Cas' eyes. Every time he does, the tide of rage and ambition that fuels him just fizzles into a helpless nothing.

"That's right." Cas confirms.

"Why the...?" Dean shakes his head. "No, man. You've seen Hell. You've been there. Why would you... Besides, once I have my way, this shit isn't even going to happen anymore. No more deals. Don't you want hear about that? About my plans? I'm gonna fix things. Keep demons off Earth. I thought, you know, I'll fix Hell, you fix Heaven. For real this time."

Cas sighs, a long sound, and so heavy it seems to drop right through the Earth. The way Dean speaks feels familiar - intimately so - and it's because of that that Cas knows that nothing he can say will dissuade him. It would be like trying to go back in time and convince himself not to work with Metatron: well intentioned, but ultimately would never work, would change nothing. So instead of screaming, fighting, demanding that Dean stop what he's doing before it goes farther, before it goes all wrong, he just sighs.

His pocket buzzes.

Dean asks, "What would you even want? You know how important this is, I mean, how could you even offer that? I can't fix me, Cas. I wouldn't if I could. And if it's something else, I mean, I'm different now, but I'm not... I'd still help out if I can, you know? You can't go handing your soul over, not to me, not to anybody, you understand?"

"You can't help." Cas says. "Not without a deal. I take it you haven't made any, yet?" A warm breeze kicks up dust, and Cas gazes impassively in the direction it's traveling. His pocket buzzes again.

"Well, no." Dean flushes, somehow a little embarrassed, and making hurried excuses. "I mean, I'm trying to put a stop to that, you think I'd go around doing it myself?"

"There's no other way for this to be done, Dean. No other way to access that power. I want you to find my grace."

 _Bobby's legs. Sam's life._ It makes sense, now that he thinks about it, like something he's known all along and just didn't spend any time considering. Understanding washes over him - if he searches for it, he can even feel the wells of power just beyond his reach, dark and impossibly, endlessly deep. _This is why they do it._ He wants to get closer, to dip inside.

To be submerged.

Carefully, Dean says, "If you get your grace back, there's no soul for me to take."

"Precisely." Cas tries to force a small smile, but it ends up closer to a wince. The pocket-buzzing, which had stopped momentarily, starts again.

"So you're asking me to make a shitty deal so you can power up." Dean's small smile, on the other hand, is real.

"I am." _buzz buzz._

"So I get a claim on your soul, which I can collect whenever, but just won't, and you get your little bottle of grace?" Dean asks, on unsure footing as to how this all works. "You know you're gonna have to be careful not to die a human."

"I will be careful." Cas softly assures. The little voice of hope, almost too quiet to be heard, gains traction in the face of what seems like genuine concern. _He's still him, in there._

"So uh... Does this mean we have to..." Dean swallows. Cas hasn't moved, and yet somehow he suddenly seems so much _closer_ than he was just a second ago.

The realization hits Castiel, and he feels something something like a fissure traveling through his chest, like cracking glass. He closes his eyes, teeth gritted, brows furrowed, like he's bracing to be slapped. He feels Dean's hands first, resting on his stiffened shoulders as if for balance. When Dean's warm, chapped lips first brush, and then press against his, Cas does everything he can to run far, far away from that feeling, pressing himself against the back of his mind in a desperate bid to escape it.

He wishes it were different, but since the fall, he has never ached to fly more than he does at this moment.

Cool, electric power dances across Dean's skin, raising the hairs at the nape of neck. He is drinking from the unfathomable well, and nothing has ever tasted sweeter. He is drunk with it, he is dizzy, he is lost, he is digging his fingers into Cas' shoulders and slipping his tongue between Cas' lips, the world around him is faded and dark and there is nothing in it but hunger and strength.

Castiel has had enough. He feels his stomach turn and he brings his hands up to shove Dean away - a move that only succeeds because Dean isn't expecting it, isn't guarded or ready to defend.

Dean's eyes fly open and dart over Cas - his face is sunken, wounded somehow. A pang of regret slots into Dean's mind, but the rush of the _deal_ and everything that comes with it buries the feeling before it can do its work. He doesn't know what to say, so he vanishes without saying anything, leaving a distantly familiar image burnt into his mind of Cas, standing alone by the side of the road, holding his phone in his hand.

  
* * *

  
"Are you _asking me how to depose me_?" Crowley asks, leaning all the way back in a leather desk-chair and sounding as if he'd had to summon all the incredulity in Hell and on Earth for this one question. "Because it really sounds like you're asking how best to go about usurping my position, which is a new level of tactless even for a Winchester."

"OK, well, when you put it that way," Dean says, "It sounds bad. But think about it. All that 'howl at the moon, lonely at the top, hell is complicated' blah blah crap, admit it, you don't even like the whole King of Hell gig."

"And you're suggesting, what, that I hand it all off to you?" He scoffs. "So you can better run around breaking my toys and absorbing my minions?"

"It ain't about the perks though, is it?" Dean presses. "'Cause what it sounds like to me is that you don't want to rule Hell as much as you want to make sure _no one else_ rules Hell."

"Get to the point." Crowley's patience wanes.

"The point is, what if you could have what you _actually_ want?" Dean leans forward, splaying his hands on the heavy, black office desk.

"And what is it you've decided I want?" He's setting down his drink, folding his arms, narrowing his eyes.

"Freedom."

"I want freedom?" Crowley deadpans. "You Americans."

"Don't you? If you knew that nobody was gonna bug you, _nobody,_ that you could do whatever you wanted and you were guaranteed to be left alone, would you really hang around here? Doing this?" Dean gestures to the large, plushly appointed office, a level of comfort that does not help his point one bit.

"And I'm just supposed to trust that you're not only willing, but also competent enough to keep the cosmos off my back while I flit around having a good time?" Crowley's brow raise is subtle, but effective. "This is the problem, _Dean._ " His tone takes an edge. "I can't trust anyone."

"That's why you gotta get me more power." Dean says. "See, I made a deal, and--"

"Aha." Crowley's mouth stretches into a knowing smile, and he stands up. "My little demon's all grown up. Now it all falls into place. You want to access... it. The thing-of-which-we-do-not-speak."

"I felt this..." Dean looks at his hand, recalling the rush. "Surge."

"Like you could do anything." Crowley walks around his desk, patent shoes silent on the plush carpet.

"Yeah. Exactly."

"Yeah, well, give it up." Crowley says, looking him dead in the eye.

"What do you mean?"

"It's not possible. You have to make deals. How do you think I got here? Of course I used _it._ But there's no skirting the rules this time. There's only... the long way round." He stands by the bar, clinking ice into a glass, pouring a scotch old enough to get social security. "One deal at a time."

"There's gotta be something." Dean says, wholly ignoring the rocks glass being offered.

"I know what you're trying to do." Crowley sets the glass down. _Rude._ "If you think you can keep secrets around demons, you're kidding yourself. This lot is more gossipy than a drunken knitting circle, especially when you're going around basically eating them for so much as looking at you funny. Do you know why I haven't stepped in? Aren't you even a _little_ curious why I haven't tried to prevent you from ruining my business?"

"Why?" Dean's certainly curious now -- he had thought himself fairly sneaky regarding his true intentions.

"'Cause it can't be done." He sips the drink himself. "It's basically a myth. The amount of voltage you'd need for something like that, you'd have to--" He stops in mid-sentence and then looks off into the middle distance, as if struck by sudden realization. 

"What? Have to what? You're saying there's a way." Dean hurries.

"Oops, I've said too much." Crowley backs up, a satire of sudden coyness. "Look me in the eye and tell me that, should you succeed, you give me time to scatter first."

"Fine."

"And that you know there's a good chance it'll totally fail and you'll just..." He mimes a big explosion.

"Well, what is it?" Dean's utter failure to recognize or consider risks and consequences does not surprise Crowley at all.

"Take it from me: You don't have the patience for the dealing method. Fortunately for you, you've that little sponge-talent. You'll have to steal the juice you need. Not from any of the peons, not even from me. You need to go bigger." He leans in. "You'd need to go archangel."

"It works on angels? Wouldn't that kill me or something?"

"Generally. But in case you haven't noticed, you're not exactly Mister Bog Standard Demon. Do you remember all that nasty apocalypse business? Sam's little play? Guzzle the blood, take control, make the heroic sacrifice, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera?" Crowley pronounces his _etceteras_ carefully.

"Of course." Dean frowns, trying to see where Crowley's going with this.

"Would you say you're as strong now as he was then?" Crowley leads, slowly, ensuring that Dean follows, letting him feel like he's solving a puzzle by himself.

"I'm stronger. A lot stronger." Dean can't help but feel he's getting jerked around, but there's no other answer he can give.

Crowley delivers the punchline: "So, what do you think your angelic prom date would do to get out of that cage?"

 

* * *

 

An angel, two humans, and a demon, sitting around a library table. The Men of Letters, Sam thinks, must be spinning in their graves.

"I did it, alright?" Crowley practically spits. "I still want to be on record as saying that this is a fantastically bad idea. But I did it, so pay up."

"Is there any other way?" Sam asks. Bags are forming under his eyes, his movements are sluggish. No one's asking when he last slept, but that doesn't mean they're not wondering.

"No." Irritation raises Crowley's voice. "It's the only way that has even a chance of leaving him alive. I want to emphasize _chance_. As in, not one hundred percent. It's just the only option that's not zero. It also puts the rest of us in a lot more danger than I, for one, am _anywhere near comfortable with_."

Sam turns to Cas. "Are you sure you want to do this?"

"Yes." Castiel says, nodding slowly, almost as exhausted as Sam. "I want to." The words feel sharp and foreign in his mouth. He'd almost said he had to, but he knows it's not true. Doing what he wants, however, is feeling more and more like an enormously heavy burden to bear.

"No one's gonna ask me what I want?" Gabriel turns to Crowley. "This wasn't easy to get, y'know. I had to call in a lot of favors."

"Bite me." Crowley answers. "Hand it over so that I can wash my hands of this whole nightmare."

"You're not done yet." Gabriel warns. He doesn't move until Crowley's face registers acknowledgement of that fact. 

Once he's satisfied, Gabriel withdraws a small glass vial on a steel chain from his jacket pocket. It feels warm in his hand. When he passes it across the table, all four of them get a look at the prize Crowley had demanded, what had convinced him to get his hands dirty.

In fact, it looks much like the vial Castiel's got in _his_ pocket: Full of light, bright and tinted blue.


	7. What Stays and What Fades Away

_Tttaappattappattaappa._

Knuckles rap fast on the door. Sam turns over in bed, covering his head with a long pillow and drawing up his knees.

“Go away.” He grumbles.

_Tap-tap tatap tap……_

_Knock knock._

“Am I the only living thing around here who needs sleep?!?” He hollers, glancing around to see if anything is in reach he could throw at the door. A shoe, maybe?

“Nope.” Gabriel’s voice makes it through the barrier. “Castiel’s in the human club too, remember?”

“Go bother him then.”

“Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam.” Gabriel says, with a soft _thuff_ against the door, like he’s leaning on it. “Giant moose, giant moose, let me come in.”

“Are you drunk?” Sam calls out, reluctantly disentangling himself from bed and making his way to the door. “Can you even _get_ drunk?!”

"You're supposed to say, not by the hairs on my chinny chin chin." Gabriel says, disgruntled.

Sam hadn’t had much luck getting to sleep anyway. He wonders if Cas is faring any better – the guy had slunk off to Dean’s empty room when he thought no one was paying attention, and Sam had had to fight the urge to roll his eyes, not because of where he was going, but because of how stealthy he’d been about it. Sam had almost called his name, almost stopped him, almost reached out to say something like _Dude, don’t worry about it,_ or _you don’t need to sneak around, I get it._

In the end, he’d just let the moment pass, let Cas slip away through the door. He feels something like a vice, or a steel fist around his heart, squeezing a little more every time he thinks about it, thinks about the way Cas had spoken of Dean, of their deal. It’s the last straw, the thing that keeps Sam going in a way he’d never have expected.

There are moments when Sam wants to back away from this plan, when he thinks it’s dangerous and insane, when he thinks it must be foolhardy madness to risk so much to bring one man back from demonhood. They’re not saving the world this time, he thinks, they’re just saving Dean. They’re calling in favors from King of Hell and a resurrected archangel, and making deals with two of the most powerful feuding beings in the cosmos, all entirely to save Dean. There are some positive side effects they're all hoping for, but no one is deceiving anybody: primary objective is save Dean.

Every time those thoughts threaten to overwhelm Sam, he thinks of Cas.

Cas' handprint burned on Dean's shoulder. Cas trusting Dean's plans. Cas looking at Dean like hung the moon. Cas standing between his own brothers and Dean, even when it had meant his own destruction, more than once.

Cas quietly disappearing into the darkness of Dean's room.

Sam opens the door. Gabriel, who had rested his entire weight against it, falls through and directly into an unsuspecting Sam, sending them both toppling to the floor in a pile of limbs.

"Well, hello there." A loose grin stretches Gabriel's mouth.

"You never answered me." Sam says. He tries to escape from under Gabriel, but for someone so much smaller, he sure seems like a lead weight. "Is it possible you're drunk?"

"Can I tell you a secret?" Gabriel says. He rolls off Sam and onto his back on the floor, not waiting for an answer before he goes on to say, "It's not alcohol. It's theobromine."

Sam sits up, brushes himself off. "Like the stuff in chocolate?"

"Most angels have _no clue_. I only figured it out by accident. Why do you think I've always got a chocolate bar in my pocket?" He gazes intently at the ceiling as if there's something interesting there. "I'll give you a hint, it's the same reason you losers always have a beer in hand."

"So, was there a reason you got wasted on Hershey's and came down here to wake me up?"

"You weren't asleep."

"I was trying to be." Sam points out.

"I think Balthazar knew." Gabriel scoots to the side just a little until his head is resting on Sam's leg, in his lap. "About the chocolate, I mean."

Sam doesn't react. He just tips his head back against the dresser, considering the situation carefully. Crowley'd had a job to do. Castiel and Sam had both been trying to sleep. Had Gabriel been bored? _Lonely?_

Gabriel is chattering, off on some tangent about little-known angel physiology. At any other time, Sam might be fascinated, but now it's like a lullaby to him. Now, he lets his eyes fall closed, and sitting on the floor in the corner of the room, he drifts off to the constant murmur of Gabriel's voice.

  
* * *

  
_** Isle of Skye, Scotland, 1660 ** _

_Sunset dyes the rolling clouds in hues of pink and orange, and that warm light on the soft grass is like something from a dream._

_Iofiel trips lightly down the far-side of a verdant hill and into a little valley. Bubbling streams and tributaries all converge on a small waterfall that, in its turn, gives way a rocky path in the green pools below. She stands on an outcropping and divests her vessel of its fluttering sundress before jumping down into the lagoon with a minimal splash._

_"Are you a fairy?" He shouts after her. "'Cause they say these are the fairy pools!"_

_"Adnachiel!" She calls his name through a playful laugh. "Come down here!"_

_"You don't look like a fairy to me!" He jokes as he disrobes and jumps in after her, slender gray wings outstretched like a feathery parachute, slowing his fall._

_By the time he splashes down and kicks his way back to the surface, the smile has dissolved from Iofiel's face._

_"What's the matter?" He sacrifices one hand from treading water to bring it up to touch her cheek._

_"Do you really think we can do this? Can it work? What if--"_

_His broad lips purse tight. "Iofiel, I would never press you into anything."_

_She reaches toward him beneath the glassy surface of the green water until her hands wrap around the muscles of his vessel's back. She pulls them together until she can rest her forehead on his shoulder._

_"Look into my heart." She murmurs into collarbone. "I desire nothing more on Earth or in Heaven than to be free with you, my wanderer."_

_"Then be at ease." Adnachiel slips a hand beneath her chin and tilts her face until their eyes meet, and she can see the wry smile on his vessel's face. "Think of it not as a fall, but a liberation."_

_"You speak temptations." Her words would seem harsh, but her tone is soft and low and her body is pressed tight against his._

_Their skin is like the pool itself in all the things it conceals within its depths. Beneath the thin layer of flesh, her grace is reaching out, brushing against Adnachiel's in a way that makes his eyes flutter shut and his body respond with a breathy groan._

_His rich, rolling laugh makes him sound almost drunk as he caresses back, grace against grace. "You're too human already."_

_She meets his eyes. "Promise me you'll find me." She says, suddenly serious. "And we will return here together, fallen and free."_

_He presses his lips against hers before saying, "Promise."_

_She climbs out of the pool onto the grassy bank, and he follows. They lay down side by side in the dew, angel blades damp and glimmering in their hands._

_Adnachiel positions the blade carefully at the center of his neck._

_"I promise." He says again before making the cut and filling the glade with dissipating blue light. He looks into Iofiel's eyes and manages a weak smile. It's not so bad, his face seems to say._

_But it all changes. The sky darkens all at once, and the last thing Adnachiel sees as he dies is a bolt of lightning and a storm of feathers. Iofiel is taken. Her furious scream fills his ears, and then there is nothing._

 -

Crowley could swear he was just standing in this doorway, but he's not sure if it was just yesterday or a hundred years ago. He touches the cold vial on the chain around his neck, rolls it between his forefinger and thumb, and heaves a heavy sigh.

It's been a long time.

If you'd have asked him three hundred and fifty ago if he'd ever want it back, he'd have spat in your face. Even now he's not so sure, but feeling the weight of the glass is a strange comfort.

"Castiel." He speaks softly into the room.

Castiel lifts his head. "Is it time already? I would have liked more time to rest."

"Be honest. Did you sleep at all?"

An uncomfortable pause. Then: "No."

"And I can't imagine you will until this is done." Crowley says mirthlessly. "So let's not waste time."

They don't speak as Castiel gathers his blade and follows Crowley into the bunker's lowest basement, where Crowley had spent so much time not so long ago. A devil's trap is still painted on the wide, empty floor. Crowley looks from the floor, to Castiel, and back again, and Castiel takes the hint like a real human, using the heel of his shoe to scratch a gap in the outer ring - as a courtesy, a show of good faith.

"Whose grace is it?" Castiel asks, still looking at the floor.

"Do you remember Adnachiel?" Crowley probes.

"The wanderer." Cas frowns. "We weren't close. I remember though, he... he cut out his grace. He fell to Earth long ago, in--Wait." He looks up abruptly, meeting Crowley's eyes.

"Light dawns over marblehead."

"You'd have to have--"

"Sold my shiny new human soul for the first thing that came to mind just to stay as far from Heaven as possible?" Crowley interrupts.

"How much do you remember?" Castiel asks.

"Imagine waking up after an especially good party, alone and with no memory of what you did last night." Crowley says stiffly. "Now imagine last night is millions of years long. More than three centuries of trying to put the pieces together, and there's still too many holes in the puzzle. There is one thing, though, one thing I somehow never forgot."

"What's that?"

"I made a promise to someone."

"Iofiel." Castiel says. "Of course, I was ordered to--" He stops suddenly, seeing Crowley go a little green. He hurries to explain, "I was ordered to kill her, but she got away. She and Anael fell together. She'd be human now."

It's the first lead in more than a hundred years. Emotions flit like birds across Crowley's face, one after the other quick as can be, there and then gone before Castiel can really register what they each are.

"Right. Well." Crowley tries to change the subject. "Are you ready?"

"I can help you. Sam and Dean can--well not now, but..." Castiel presses, sympathy welling up in him, unbidden. He is far too familiar with that dark, cold hole of loss and uncertainty now to feel nothing, even for a demon.

"We don't have time for this. And don't go blabbing about it to the wonder twins." Crowley dismisses. "Are you ready?"

Castiel regards the angel blade in his fist. "Yes."

After a long sigh, Crowley raises a hand in the air and snaps. The sound echoes around the empty room, and then they both hear what comes next: A low, animal growl that seems to come at once from everywhere and nowhere. Crowley looks into the center of the room. A little smile appears on his face and then vanishes with a hard swallow.

"Sorry about this, love." He whispers at what looks to Castiel like thin air, and then extends a hand, patting nothing on the head. "Stay."

A little whine comes out of the nothingness.

Castiel takes two steps into the center of the room and feels around with the dagger until he finds the hellhound. He raises his weapon high above his head.

Crowley turns away.

By the time he turns back, the deed is done, and Castiel is covered head to toe, soaked in blood.

"One down." Crowley says. "Two to go."


	8. See How Deep the Bullet Lies

'The Cage' doesn't look anything like Dean would have imagined.

The door to the space is like every other door Dean has found in his explorations of post-Crowley Hell: A simple hollow balsa-wood door with a lever knob and a little empty plaque at eye level, like something out of any badly-aging office complex in America. It's clear, however, that navigation is deliberately obfuscated by the subtleties in the design, and Dean is impressed despite himself by the attention to detail.

Every dingy hallway looks exactly the same, down to the water stains in the drop ceiling, the pattern of yellowing fluorescent bulbs that twitch and flicker, even the dust in the corners of the woodwork along the floor is identical. Nearly all of the faceless doors that line the identical corridors lead to more identical corridors. What shocks Dean most is that there's not a guard, or a warden, hardly even any locked doors in the whole place. A soul that knew the route perfectly could stroll right out of Hell itself.

One mistake, however, and the labyrinth would consume them. He's seen it happen, watched demons be born from the very walls, and by the time these immortal, wild creatures find their way to Earth, every scrap of humanity has been dragged from them. The structure in itself is a form of torture he would never have considered.

 _Points for creativity,_ Dean thinks.

None of this is a problem for him. He's grown rapidly attuned to the movement of time down here - when he'd been pulled from Hell the first time, he'd tried to find a conversion factor for Earth time to Hell time, but in reality, he finds that it isn't constant. Rather, it moves in fits and starts, and the more power her consumes, the stronger he grows, the more naturally it comes to sense the shifting tides of energy that seem to govern the place.

In this way, Dean navigates like a bat, or a dolphin, closing his eyes and pressing his palm to the wall, casting a signal and feeling its echo. It doesn't take him long to find the door to the cage. When he touches it, he recoils, the power behind it is like being burned. He has to wrap his hand in the bottom of his shirt just to turn the knob.

Anxiety twists in his stomach.

 _There's no other way._ He says to himself, he repeats it like a mantra, an affirmation that he's doing the right thing. Little voices rise like smoke from the corners of his mind, questioning - _What do you really know about this?_ They ask. _What if you've been misled? If 'freezing Hell' is such a good idea, why hasn't it been done?_

No one's had the power, he thinks, stamping on the coals of his doubt. A knight of hell, with the power of an archangel - he will be a new thing altogether, a thing that has never been seen, never been possible until this singular confluence of events. _Almost godlike,_ he imagines. His experiences poisons the thought though, and the word doesn't necessarily give him the confidence he thinks it should.

But isn't this what he's always wanted? It's the ultimate remedy to his greatest fears, he would never be weak again, never reliant or dependent. He could crush like a bug anything that threatened him or--

Or Sam.

Guilt nips at his heels, but he swats it away. Sam will understand when all is done.

Dean pushes open the door.

A tidal wave of hot power almost bowls him over. The first words that congeal in his mind upon observing the space are _infinite aquarium_. A pane of something that looks like dark-tinted glass stretches in every direction farther than he can see, and beyond it, shadows shift in an uncertain pattern like the last sunlight in deep water, before everything goes black.

He approaches the glass, but does not dare to touch - the heat coming off it is immense.

"You assholes in there?" He shouts. "I want to talk to Michael."

Something in the distance rumbles, low and deep like a whalesong. The flickers and pulses in the darkness accelerate, and in the back of his head, there is an alien rattling that resolves into what Dean would describe as an electronic laugh.

His legs are coiled with tension, the urge to flee and never look back is intense, but he stays rooted to the spot.

The shape that flies across the other side of the glass is difficult for him to process. It wheels away from the barrier and back again, swooping and diving in the darkness. For one thing, it is _immense_ ; when it comes close enough, the sheer size is enough to make Dean stumble back. When it retreats, he squints at it, trying to find the outline of the thing. It's nothing like a human at all, but rather closer to some kind of eldritch stingray, with broad, rippling wings and a thin tail. The details are lost on him though, and in the end, he thinks he prefers it that way.  _Did Cas look like that?_ Dean wonders.

"Do you intend to release me, or merely to observe?" When it speaks, Dean _hears_ nothing but a high pitched squeal like microphone feedback, but in his mind, words seem to start at an infinitely small point and expand until they fill his skull. "My brother and I no longer fight. Your entertainment will not be much."

"Yeah, I uh..." Dean reaches for a lie, totally glossing over and paying no attention to very important information. "I mean to release the archangel Michael."

There's that laugh again, like the _zap_ of touching a car door in the wintertime but with his _whole brain_.

"And you would invite me into your vessel?" Michael booms into Dean's head.

"Yes. I give you consent occupy this body." Dean says, trying to sound as 'official' as possible and feeling a bit silly about it.

Michael laughs louder this time, it's more like licking a bunch of nine-volt batteries.

"What," Michael questions, "Now that you have tainted yourself, you wish me to--" He stops abruptly.

A deep rumbling whine sounds from the distance. Michael's voice screeches back, and the faraway song trills in response.

"Very well, Dean Winchester. Touch the wall, and release me."

 _Touch the wall?_ Fear vibrates Dean's hands, makes them shake. He closes his eyes. No going back now, he thinks, as he reaches forward until his fingers contact the barrier.

Under his touch, with a sound like straining ice, it begins to crack.

 

* * *

 

When Sam had woken up that morning, Gabriel had been gone, and there's been no sign of him since. Sam had simply had to press forward on the assumption that he'd show. Sam had taken the trouble to make the Impala a little more demon-friendly, but Crowley had blipped off on his own, leaving Sam alone with Castiel for the nearly four-hour drive to Stull. They'd hardly spoken a word the whole time, neither one willing to put voice to the overwhelming dread that had grown heavier and heavier with each passing mile.

By the time they'd arrived, Sam's hands had been shaking on the wheel.

"It will be different this time." Cas says at last, sounding more like he's trying to convince himself than anyone else.

"I know." Sam had answered. "It's just..." He looks through the windshield and tries to shut out flashbacks. Ultimately, he never finishes his sentence.

Sam opens the door and wearily unfolds himself from the driver's seat. He's too tired to even be surprised when Gabriel rounds the corner.

"I had some things to take care of. We ready to tango?" Gabriel asks, his movements as loose and calm as ever.

Castiel bends at the waist and vomits quietly into the dry grass.

The awkward waiting doesn't last long. Sam is the first to hear it, or rather feel it. Crowley had explained that the space Lucifer and Michael occupy exists on every plane, that none of its doors can be opened or shut independently. Sam hears the sound from nowhere like a crack spreading across a frozen lake.

He looks around at the others, who catch on moments after him as the wind kicks up and the ground begins to buzz gently beneath their feet.

"Now!" Crowley says.

 _Will you accept me into your body?_ Lucifer's voice ripples through Sam. _I will protect you through this, and we will take the next steps together._

"Yes." Sam replies, still uncertain even as he says it, still acutely aware of how wrong it could all go if he were betrayed, how bizarre it is to trust Lucifer now.

That's all it takes. Such a small and simple word, yes, a quirk of the mouth, a noise arbitrarily decided upon by a bunch of self-important glorified chimpanzees. Yet when it is said, the clouds darken in the sky, the ground of Stull cemetery jerks and cracks, the wind whips in tight little cyclones that form and disperse in seconds. From the slender fissures in the Earth, a fog of white light escapes like steam, rising and swirling and filling Sam's nose and mouth, turning him into something as bright as starlight.

One crack widens, just enough. Castiel looks down into the hole. He takes a breath, and then a step, and plunges down, down into the dark.

  
* * *

  
The cage accepts him, pulls it down into its depths. Its substrate is strange - Castiel can breathe, but so too can he move through it like water, kicking and pressing against the air with cupped hands, hearing the rush past his ears, hearing the high screeches and deep bellows of the distant chaos. He wants to reach out with his grace to search this place in moments, and when he reaches for it and recalls that he is human, that it is not there, its absence aches in a way it never did on Earth, not even at the worst of times.

He can sense something nevertheless, however - a voice in deep smaller than the others. He aims himself at it, propelling himself through the depth of endless space, calling out and listening for the ever-louder answer until he sees the tiny, human shape disturbing the penumbra.

He reaches out for it, and it recoils at first at his touch.

"I'm here to help." Cas says, "I know who you are. Do you remember? You're Adam Milligan. I'm here to do what I should have done a long time ago. Do you understand?"

Adam looks up, glances at Cas' hands clasped onto his shoulders, nothing in his eyes but resigned bewilderment. Nevertheless, he doesn't fight when Cas tightens his fingers around his arm and begins to kick back toward the surface where Gabriel is waiting.

  
* * *

  
 _Sam takes a few steps from under a campground pine tree. The stars are beautiful and numerous, out where light pollution can't poison the view, and even the milky way itself casts a shadow on the clear winter sky tonight._

_And then he remembers._

_"Lucifer?" He says to the night, his breath puffing out in little clouds._

_"I'm here." And he is, standing before Sam wearing Sam's own face. "Your pulse was rapid, your blood pressure was high--"_

_"I was scared." Sam explains, "I'm sorry, I just--"_

_"I understand. I found this memory, I felt that it would be more comfortable for you to wait here. Is this satisfactory?"_

_Sam swallows. "It's not that I'm not grateful, I am, but... I want to see my brother._

  
* * *

  
Dean stands at the bottom of the cage-sea, not understanding. He had expected some kind of fight, a grapple for control, _something,_ but other than what feels kind of like a moderate case of heartburn, there's nothing. He can feel Michael, but it's like he's somehow _switched off,_ just dormant.

 _Well, I guess that makes this easier._ Dean thinks, though the doubt that had pestered him before is getting bigger, louder, even as he tries to ignore it. He can feel Lucifer through Michael's angelic senses, can look up and see a light through that crack in the Earth.

It's not just Lucifer he detects, it's...

Sam?

Panic gives him strength. He kicks off the floor and swims up, up, up through the denseness of the space until he reaches the cracks. The moment he tumbles through into the world, hitting the open air, he looks in his mind for Michael.

Now is the time.

He'll show them what he'd meant, what he'd planned, they'll understand, Sam will kick Lucifer out, Dean will destroy him with his new-found strength, and then he'll turn his attentions on Hell and everything will go according to plan.

 _Are you sure?_ Says Michael.

 _Stay out of my thoughts._ Dean replies, curt as can be.

Dean reaches inside himself, closes his eyes and goes still as stone as he searches for the place where Michael hides, ready to tear him apart, to rend him into dust and consume him just as planned. While he is lost within, several things happen that Dean doesn't notice at all.

First, Gabriel puts two fingers to the head of a fearful and feral Adam Milligan as returned to Earth by Cas. The young man locks eyes with the archangel, peace overtakes his face, and then his body goes limp: his soul has been delivered.

The second the soul is gone, Cas goes green, and collapses to the ground unconscious, a thin stream of blood trickling from his nose and mouth.

In a move that would stun Dean if he'd seen it, Crowley collects Cas awkwardly and they both disappear.

And finally Gabriel reaches down to the center of the cracks in the Earth and in a incredible display of strength that is noticed by absolutely no one, heals them. Exhausted, he stumbles a few yards away to sit beneath a tree near the car.

Lucifer watches Dean, and smiles with Sam's mouth.

 _Aren't you going to do something?_ Sam asks.

 _Yes, something. But not yet._ Lucifer answers. _Watch._

They can tell when Dean finds Michael. Dean's eyes fly open - not black, not green, but white and glowing, brilliant as floodlamps.

Above them, his eyebrows frown.

"What?" Dean asks in a frightened whisper. "No, this wasn't--No. No no no." His mouth lights up too, and then his skin.

 _Do something, you have to do something._ Sam says. _He's killing him!_

 _Patience._ Lucifer soothes, but it does little good.

Dean is screaming, shrieking in a thousand voices the pain and fear and torment that is burning him alive.

A black like velvet shadows seeps from Dean's pores and sinks into the soil to be swallowed and neutralized by the embrace of Earth itself. White light makes him glow from within. His arm flies up above his head like he's a puppet on strings, and the mark, the callous and terrible mark that caused all the trouble, burns away to a fine ash and blows away in the wind. All that's left is a pink brush of irritation where it had once lived.

Dean's eyes close again, and when they open, they are blue.

"Brother." Michael says. "I've done my part. Dean Winchester may be rid of his mark, but he is still a demon - if the plan is him to survive I will have to depart immediately. His condition is deteriorating as we speak."

Lucifer takes three steps on Sam's long legs to cross the yellowing grass and wrap his arms around Dean's body.

"They won't understand." Lucifer says. "How can they? I do not envy you your next task."

"Nor I yours." Michael says grimly. Dean's head nods gently, and then tilts back, allowing a great cloud of light to leave his body and dissipate.

When he opens his eyes, they're black once more. He winces immediately when he sees Sam's face, with the true face of Lucifer imposed upon it. Dean can feel right away the weakness that threatens to overtake him entirely, and he falls to his knees.

"Be not afraid." Lucifer says with Sam's mouth. "I once told you that I could see many futures, but at that time, my vision was clouded. Many memories have returned to me. Your brother spoke the truth -- I regret my mistakes, and I now endeavor to rectify them." He stands over Dean.

Dean stares at the grass. "I'm getting really sick of angels in Sam."

"He is in good hands. Even at my worst, I've always told you what I believed to be the truth, and I promise you now that I will return your brother to you better than I found him." Lucifer reaches out with Sam's hand to cup Dean's cheek. "Dean. Heaven and Hell are more than simply the dwellings of those you dislike. What you were doing would have prevented souls from entering hell permanently, Dean. Can you imagine it? If we had not intervened, I imagine that Death would have presented you with a less appealing end than this."

"End?" Dean looks up.

Lucifer laughs, a rolling, echoing sound completely different from Sam's laughter. "The end of one road, perhaps. Return home to your bunker and your companion - he will be in need of aid." Lucifer reaches into Sam's pocket, pulls out a keyring, and tosses the car keys at the ground in front of Dean. He nods toward the unconscious Cas. "Consider this my only warning, Dean Winchester: _Do not return to Hell under any circumstances._ "

Companion? Dean gathers the keys, and when he looks back up to ask what companion, Lucifer and Sam's body are both gone. 

His cell phone rings, a high, tinny sound that is laughably incongruous with everything, somehow. The ID reads _666._ Crowley. 

 


	9. Anywhere I Would Have Followed You

According to every source Dean has ever asked, or seen, the drive from Stull back to Lebanon takes _at least_ three and a half hours, even in good weather with no traffic. After the brief call with Crowley, however, Dean cuts an entire hour off that time. His speedometer seldom dips below 85 and red lights are optional. He'd kill to have his teleporting back, but apparently that was a "knight of hell" level skill, not a "garden variety demon" one.

Crowley had ignored Dean's self-righteous rage and laid it all out for him, told him what Cas had done at the graveyard, and what had happened after, his condition -- how had Crowley put it? _Circling the drain?_

"I wouldn't tarry if I were you." Crowley had said, with a tired resignation that rings with the weight of every one of the long, long years he's lived.

Dean leaves the car running, doesn't even stop to shut the door when he stumbles into the bunker, mindful to avoid the really _myriad_ traps he can no longer sense, but must instead simply remember. His feet carry him down the stairs, taking them two at a time and jumping the last five. If Crowley's even in the bunker at all, Dean doesn't notice him.

In the center of the broken devil's trap where Sam had released Crowley so recently, Castiel stands over what looks like an old dentist's chair. His posture is weak, and he leans on the back of it, resting his head on his arm and staring at the floor where little drops of blood have fallen from his nose.

"Dean." He looks up, but his face is all worry and weight.

Dean's blinks and his eyes go green, bright and wet with tears held back. He walks into the trap unreservedly without so much as a second thought, not even when Cas steps past him rather than into his arms and bends down to fill in the empty space with red sharpie, trapping Dean inside.

"What... What are you doing?" Dean's eyes flip to black and his voice drops. "What's happening?"

Cas takes a ragged breath and looks away before he sighs it out. He doesn't answer, only moves to the outer edge of the circle and, with slow, careful movements, sets up a small wooden card table just out of reach outside the border. On the table, he places a little glass vial, bright and glowing.

"When you can reach that vial," Castiel says, pausing in the middle of his sentence for breath, "You can save me."

Dean searches Castiel's eyes. His irises are like bright blue suns ringed with the red rays of his veins. "Don't do this, you can't do--What if you die before I'm human? You know what'll happen to you? I thought you were safe!"

"I hope I don't die." Cas jokes weakly, the ghost of a smirk passing across his face, rapidly replaced with a wince as he deftly pulls back the plunger on the needle sticking into the inner bend of his elbow. What he's thinking, but not saying, is _then I will follow you to where we'll both belong together._ "You should sit down."

Dean backs into the chair and allows Cas to fasten the restraints.

"Uh, I don't mean to criticize the plan, but... if I'm tied up, how do I..." Dean trails off, jerking his head loosely in the direction of the jar of grace.

Castiel non-answers. "Did you know that when the Men of Letters built this dungeon, they consecrated it? This is sacred ground. If you're feeling uncomfortable, that's the reason." He withdraws the needle from his arm and approaches, musing distantly, "If it makes you feel better, I am uncomfortable as well, though it is more of a mental discomfort. It seems almost heretical from my present perspective, to consecrate for God a place of torture."

He pushes the needle into Dean's neck and lowers the plunger, trying not to be too cruel, but his hand is inexperienced and he knows right away that he's caused pain.

"The world is not the place I used to think it was." Castiel murmurs near Dean's head, as if he is speaking only to himself.

"Cas, you don't have to do this." Dean says. He tries to bring his hand up to his neck, to rub the stinging place where the needle was, but there's not enough slack on the chains. "I'm fine, even just being a regular demon - even now I'm still stronger than I was before."

He blinks several times in quick succession, eyes flashing black, then green, then black again.

Cas lowers himself stiffly to the bench off to one side of the restraint chair and rests his head in his hands.

  
* * *

  
Sam's body stands at the entrance to the cage in the depths of Hell. Lucifer stretches out his palm and repairs the dark glass wall, just as Gabriel had repaired the Earth. In Heaven, he can feel Michael's power heal the gate that had opened there as well.

 _I will release you soon._ Lucifer informs him. _Never again shall my duty call for a vessel. You and yours will be free. Before we part, I want you to understand._

Sam finds himself standing atop a tall pillar of rock, towering over a dark, and ancient pine forest shrouded fog. The night is cool and still. Lucifer, appearing as the vessel Sam remembers from his nightmares, stands before him.

"What do you hear?" Asks Lucifer.

Sam closes his eyes and listens, but there is nothing - not a cricket or a bird or the skitter of an animal in the trees, not even the wind.

"Nothing." Sam frowns.

Lucifer steps forward and puts one finger on Sam's temple. "Listen to the silence again."

Sam lets his eyes fall shut once more. He is about to open them, to protest that silence means silence, that there's no sound, he can't hear a damn thing, but just before he gives up, he lets out a little startled gasp.

Just at the edge of hearing, where he has to strain to find it, there is a sound. At first it resembles some strange woodwind instrument, then a string, then a voice, or perhaps a million voices. It is rich and strange, not speaking, at least not any language Sam has ever heard.

The harder he listens, the louder it gets. Wrapped up within it are deep groans like earthquakes and bellows like thunder, sighs like waves, and cracks like lightning. The hairs on his neck stand up and goosebumps riddle his arms and back. To call it _sound_ is only the best English word Sam can think of to describe it, it is so much more than that, entering him through every sense he uses to interact with the world.

He begins to hum deep in his throat. Peace grows like warm coals in his core and spreads until it encapsulates him totally, understanding surrounds him like a blanket.

"The music of creation." Lucifer says.

The moment Lucifer speaks, Sam can no longer hear it. He seeks almost frantically, but finds nothing. Emotions darken his heart immediately, loss, grief, anger, he is bereft, he thinks he would do anything to hear that sound again. His eyes fly open.

"What happened?" Sam asks.

"That's what we wanted to know." Lucifer answers. He looks up at the stars. "Before gravity, before light, before the big bang, before _time itself,_ there was the music. If He created music, or He was the music, I am no longer sure. At some time, His lone song split. He gave us song. The music is like a blueprint."

"It's incredible." Sam breathes.

"And that's only what I can filter through your senses. It is the blood and breath of our true forms. We are music, given the flame of life. We each had our themes, our notes, our rhythms, and we sang together by His will. And then came the cacophony." He looks at Sam with a sad smile. "That's you."

"Humans?"

"You all have the music as well, Sam. That is why Our Father was gone. He gave himself to the world, to all the worlds, split his voice infinitely, but it seemed no piece could easily hear the others. It was noise to our ears, and He had gone. We had no guidance, and we lost the thread of creation, and covered the noise of Earth with our own." All at once, he seems to change the subject. "What do you remember about the cage?"

Sam shakes his head. "It was mostly taken away."

"Time stretches into infinity, and there is nothing there, a deep and treacherous nothing - no better torment but one another, but after the fall, after the return of memories long forgotten, Michael and I realized what that truly _meant._ "

A sudden understanding straightens Sam's spine. "Silence."

"That's right. Earth and even Heaven are wracked with noise, but the cage? A perfect, never-ending silence, if we were only to close our own mouths." He becomes passionate now. "We heard it, Sam. We heard it again. We had led ourselves astray, but the path was finally before us once more, once and for all."

 

* * *

  
"Cas, wait." Dean tries to reach for him, only to be stopped by the chain.

"I won't be long. I'm..." He swallows gummy spit. "I'm thirsty."

Cold and hot slip through Dean's veins, pumped by his heart through his body all the way to his fingers and toes and back again. The pain is immense - he's retched uselessly a few times, but he's almost getting used to it now, now he can focus on his body and swallow the sensation of tumbling vertigo before it overwhelms him.

He listens to Cas' footsteps, _human footsteps,_ he thinks, going up the stairs and down the hall before he loses them. He can feel his eyes turn black when he closes them, can feel the curses rising through his body to his mouth. Cursing whom, he wonders - Cas? He tries to convince himself that Cas is a fool or a conspirator to destroy him, but he cannot bring his heart to believe it.

So he curses himself, instead. Curses his ambition, his stubbornness, his own stupidity as he sees it, curses everything he can think of about himself like a drunk who swears he'll give up his flaw after just one more bottle, and he wonders if he's alive in the morning, if anything will even change, if he can ever be strong enough to change the self that brought him so low.

Perhaps as a demon, his addict-brain reasons, he could be strong, he could change, he could grow into a better man, and only then should he be allowed to become human.

The footsteps return. They grow quickly, and Dean tries to ignore the wave of relief that almost brings tears to his eyes when Cas rounds the corner and passes into his line of sight carrying a thirty-two ounce bottle of some kind of off-brand sports drink. He can't tell if the redness at the center of Cas' lips is juice or blood, and why is he looking at Cas' mouth, anyway?

"Almost time for the fourth shot." Cas says, taking a long drink and wiping his mouth before continuing. "After this, if you react as expected, I may be able to unbind you. Are you thirsty?"

Dean shakes his head. "Unbind? You know, we could just do that now." He says, trying to hide his slyness, trying to sound genuine. "You don't look so good."

Cas' eyes fall shut and he takes a deep breath, as if centering himself.

"See what I mean? I'm fine, you look like crap, I mean I don't have healing juju anymore, but I could probably get somebody who does, or maybe you should just use the grace right now." Dean prattles too quickly. "We should really stop this. It's a really bad idea. I can be a good demon, think of all the demons we've met who are nice."

"Lucifer and Sam are handling the other end, you know." Cas babbles back like a bored secretary, "Gabriel did more back there than he promised. He said he'd had enough, that he'd only get involved in exchange for a favor from Lucifer, I think we all know what that is of course, but I think it's just a show. I think he did it because he wanted to."

This is far from the first time tonight Cas has failed to respond directly to Dean, and the frustration is building steadily, helped more than a little by the bindings that leave him unable to shift position or so much as scratch an itch. It's blunted a little when he realizes why. _He's nervous. He's really afraid, and he doesn't want me to see it._

"Favor?"

Cas answers him with a needle to the neck. "He promised Gabriel --through Sam, that is-- that he could heal his wings."

"What about you?" Dean closes his eyes as the world dips and spins again.

Cas swallows. He averts his eyes when he says, "I don't know what's going to happen."

It sounds like a lie.

 

* * *

 

"My task is simple, Sam - once Castiel completes the trial, I shall be the arbiter and the sentinel, to keep the balance in place. You and I have one more thing to do together, and then I will retreat to Hell for eternity, as Michael will be the arbiter and sentinel of Heaven. We were meant to rule side by side, yet across the borders of the worlds. The gates will close. No angel, nor demon, will cross them again."

"Don't you want to see Heaven, after all this time?" Sam asks. _Sympathy for the Devil indeed_ , Sam thinks.

"Want? There is no room for want, here. Does the baritone want to sing soprano? If he does, he is a fool or a human. I was the former. Freedom forges its own chains, and it is the rare angel who finds a melody that is worth carrying them. I believe you may have met one or two." A smirk crosses Lucifer's face, and the world dissolves around them.

Sam's body stands in Stull cemetery once more, in the shade of the broad-leafed tree where Gabriel rests on the ground, almost innocent-looking in his sleep.

"Wake, brother." Says Sam's mouth. "You have brought honor to your song."

Gabriel's eyes flutter open, amber and gold glinting in the sunlight that dapples through the branches.

"Stand." Says Sam's mouth.

"When you say song," Gabriel narrows his gaze. He looks around conspiratorially, as if afraid to be heard. He almost whispers, "Can you hear... you know?"

"I can. And so can Michael, and he will deliver it to you as well, if you return to Heaven."

Gabriel puts his hands in his pockets, looking down, looking away. "Now that you mention it..."

"What troubles you?"

"I don't think I'm going back. I know, I know, it's gonna be different, like it should be and all that jazz, but I know where I belong. I've known for a long time, and now that I've uh... slept on it, you might say, I'm staying here. If that means you can't wing me, that's fine. I'd rather walk all the way to Timbuktu than never see Earth again." Gabriel looks relieved to have all that out.

"You will lose all link to Heaven, in time, you will even become a human yourself." Sam's head shakes, and Lucifer dresses his face with concern. "You will be missed."

"Yeah, so will you, you big galoot. You're not going back either, don't act all weird about me hanging around."

"Very well." Lucifer nods Sam's head.

"But uh... if I could just get a couple of flights, there's one more errand I want to do before this is all said and done."

"How you've grown. Perhaps Earth is best for you after all." Lucifer laughs, reading Gabriel's thoughts. He puts Sam's hand on Gabriel's shoulder, and all at once, they stand before the low, inconspicuous entrance to the edifice built by the Men of Letters.

Gabriel looks at Sam's face, and sees immediately that Lucifer is gone.

"Samsqatch? Just you in there?" He peers into Sam's eyes for confirmation.

"Uh..." Sam swallows. "Yeah, just me. You uh... have something on your back." He watches Gabriel look behind himself and stretch the wings that Sam can't believe he's seeing.

"I'll be right back. Promise."

 

* * *

 

"What do you mean, why? Because I'm an archangel." Gabriel says. "And because I've got a yeti waiting in Kansas so I'd like this to not take too much time."

"And how am I supposed to believe you?" Answers the slim-hipped man, still holding his headphones in one hand as if about to put them back on at any second.

Gabriel does something he hasn't done in a long time, something he thought he'd never get to do again. He closes his eyes and spreads six enormous wings, letting their impression form against the Earthly world, their shadows projected on the far wall. Something unearthly lights him from within, and his eyes glow bright and glimmer gold.

"Are you for real?" The man asks through a thick accent - Finnish, Gabriel thinks. He runs his fingers through shaggy platinum hair.

"Too legit to quit." Gabriel says, "And so were you, once upon a time... You were a brat just like me, I can see that hasn't changed."

"Excuse me!?"

"Dude, these things," Gabriel gestures to his wings, "Only have a few more trips in 'em at best, and I'm using one to help  _your_  ass out. Would a little gratitude kill you?"

"What are you going to do?"

"You don't know it," He speaks fast and frank, "but you're missing a lot of info, and I can think of at least a couple of people who'd be happier if you had it. I may not be able to get you a new pair of sweet-ass wings, but I  _can_  do  _this._ "

Aleksi is too startled, too off-balance to step away from the stranger. Gabriel's eyes flash as he touches the pale skin on Aleksi's forehead.

Gabriel's voice echoes in the room, or maybe just in Aleksi's head. The words, had they been translated from Enochian to English, would be **"Remember, Iofiel."**

A white-hot rush fills his head, and Aleksi hears himself scream.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"Cas? You alright?" Dean asks to the floor.

He's met with nothing more than a watery rattling cough. The area outside the trap isn't lit well, but even from here, Dean can see the splatter of blood on Cas' legs where he sits slumped against the wall, where he coughed. Cas' hands shake as he sinks the needle into his vein.

Dean's tongue makes a horrible noise against the top of his mouth. He's _parched._ He can't remember the last time he was thirsty and now he struggles to think of what he wouldn't do for some of that red juice, but the bench is outside the trap.

Cas had unchained him from the chair after the sixth hour, the sixth shot -- it had taken until then for him to calm, for his mind to begin to clear, for Cas to feel certain he could trust Dean to behave. The first obvious stirrings of humanity's return had alarmed them both. Dean had relished the warm brush of Cas' skin against his as he'd undone the bindings, and they'd both jolted a bit, as if neither had ever been touched before.

The drink is still out of reach though, sitting on the bench near where Cas rests quietly. He'd stopped talking not long ago, his voice had simply worn out. Dean wishes he'd talk again.

"Uh, Buddy?" He crouches down, trying to get a look at Cas' face.

When Cas lifts his head, the picture's not pretty: A dull, sickly orange light dances softly beneath the skin of Cas' arms and face, leaving bruises in its wake.

"Yes, Dean?" He whispers.

"Not to be an asshole, but if you could grab the drink, I'm kind of dying of thirst." He tries to make it sound lighthearted, but he can't keep the tremble out of his voice. He wonders if it's obvious, if Cas can hear the words beneath the words, _come closer, sit with me, I'm worried about you._

"Of course," He murmurs, nodding slow, "S'good you're thirsty. Means... 's'working." He wraps his fingers deliberately around the plastic bottle and scoots into the room until he can lean back against the wide metal pole that holds up the chair in the trap. Sweat drips from Cas' forehead and stains the armpits and back of his shirt - Dean thinks he smells like a high school locker room, but is glad to have him close nevertheless.

"Hey." Dean alerts, "I think it's time for the seventh shot. Just one more, right? We can get through this."

Cas tries to lift the hand that holds the needle, but his fingers are wet with sweat and it slips through them. The glass shatters, the needle bends, the blood spills.

"Useless." Cas whispers. "I'm so useless."

"No, no, you're not useless." Dean's not even self-conscious as he cups Cas' cheek, palm brushing the stubble there. "You've never been useless, not that I'd care if you were, but look at everything you've done. It's not over. There's more needles in the drawer, right?"

Cas' head nods again.

"Let's get you up." Dean puts Cas' arm over his own shoulder and wraps his own behind Cas' back and under his damp armpit. He pushes up with his legs, giving Cas as much support as he can, and together, one step at a time, they get to the edge of the trap.

Cas leans forward out of the circle - Dean can't go any farther, so he's on his own. He lets himself fall against the table with the drawer and locks his elbow, bracing himself with one arm as he pulls the knob and sifts through the mess until he finds a new needle. Dean pulls him back and lowers them both back to the floor again.

"See? Look at that. Teamwork." Dean laughs, not without a little desperation.

Cas' lips are cracked and dry, but he smiles a little anyway.

"Let me do that." Dean says when he sees Cas struggling with the packaging, but Cas doesn't listen, maybe doesn't hear, he just keeps fumbling with the layer of plastic.

Dean reaches out and clasps Cas' hands between his own, holding them still. Cas looks up at him as if he'd just suggested they fly to the moon, as if he thinks Dean's gone mad, his pupils so huge there's almost no blue to be seen. Dean just stays that way for a moment, before gently pulling Cas' hands apart and taking the package from him, tearing the plastic open in one graceful move.

He doesn't wait for Cas to react. He gathers Cas' right arm, the one least poked and drained thus far, and straightens it. He closes his knees around Cas' wrist, holding it in place as he prepares the needle and sinks it into Cas' skin.

A hiss escapes Cas' mouth, and he grits his teeth, observing distantly how much more it hurts somehow when someone else does it, or is it just his new weakness? He watches as Dean turns the needle on himself, bending his head to the side and plunging it into the soft skin of his own neck. Crinkles form around his eyes as he squints against the pinch and the feeling of intrusion. Dean holds his breath, he forgets to breathe through it, but it's over quickly enough.

When it's done, Dean places the needle gingerly to one side, and positions himself next to Cas on the floor, so close their hips and legs touch.

He guides Cas' head to his own shoulder, and Cas doesn't fight. He rests his head and closes his eyes.

Cas isn't sure if the hour simply passes quickly, or if he falls asleep, but he suspects the latter. Dean's voice sounds like it's worlds away, and Cas can't quite make out what he's saying. He thinks he hears his name.

Somewhere at the edge of feeling, there's a little pinch on his right arm, but it doesn't last long. Did he imagine it? He's so tired.

Dean's voice is louder now. Cas concentrates as hard as he can to make out the words.

"...the thing, come on, we're almost there, you have to say it. Are you in there? Come on Cas, don't leave on me now, you can't, you can't, you-- Cas, I..." The sound fades.

Cas feels himself sink into the cool embrace of darkness.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"Holy shit, it worked."

These are the first words Cas hears when he wakes, coughing violently, blood spraying the chair, the floor, and Dean. He rolls over onto his side, hacking, gagging, and spitting what seems like endless blood until his breaths even out.

Dean looks at his own hands and bites back a laugh. He's not exactly CPR certified - he'd merely remembered a combination of stuff Sam said and stuff he'd seen on Dr. Sexy, and it had fucking _worked._

"Cas, quick, you gotta say the thing, the spell. We're almost there, we're almost done."

Cas nods roughly. He doesn't take his eyes off Dean's. He realizes he has no knife, so he takes up the tip of the needle and drags it roughly across his palm until blood is drawn. He claps his hand over Dean's mouth.

 _"Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus. Hanc animam redintegra, lustra! Lustra!"_ Cas' voice comes out like something torn to shreds and dragged across broken glass, but it does the job. White light fills the room, and then goes out.

"Dean, I--" He swallows, chokes.

The sound of breaking glass reaches him, followed by a sudden light and warmth. He takes in an easy breath, no cough, no rattle, no blood. Angel radio sparks to life, and he hears the announcement: Michael's song, calling every angel on Earth back to heaven, welcoming yet stern, warning that the gates will shut, that anyone left behind will never see the spires of Heaven again.

He opens his eyes, and the first thing he sees is more glorious than anything he could have wanted in Heaven. He sees Dean. Not just Dean's face, freckles and hairs and skin, but Dean's soul, Dean's _human soul,_ shining through like the sun.

Castiel broadcasts a final message back to Michael.

_Goodbye._

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The End.
> 
> [but watch for the epilogue ;-)]


	10. You and I Might Just Be The Best Thing [Epilogue]

**SEVERAL MONTHS LATER**

  
The morning is crisp and cool, leaves in all sorts of warm hues litter the roadside, crunching under Sam's feet. He takes a detour to visit the mailbox around a curve up the wide street so as to keep attention well away from the bunker itself. He scowls when he sees that they've left a package under the mailbox again, he keeps telling them to leave it with the cheese shop in town - Dean's managed to make a friend there who offered to hold onto the bigger boxes they order.

The package isn't too heavy, no need to get the car - he's been exercising anyway, so he wraps his arms around the bottom corners and carries it back.

At this time of day, he's the only one awake and the whole building is still and quiet. Dean can make fun as much as he likes, but Sam, who never thought he'd feel comfortable settling down anywhere, has come to appreciate coming home to a quiet house in the morning.

He dips his hand into his back pocket for a knife and drags its tip across the tape that seals the cardboard.

Inside the parcel he finds food - sweet food, and tons of it. Plastic boxes filled with cakes and fudges and bright-colored retro candy almost burst. At the bottom of the box, Sam finds the postcard.

He realizes right away it's a custom one. The photo on the front has three strange, mismatched people on it: In the middle is Crowley, his receding hairline pink with sunburn and wearing a familiarly mischievous grin.

To his left, wrapped in one of Crowley's arms and with his hand around Crowley's stomach in kind, is a sharp-jawed man with platinum blonde hair and big can headphones around his neck. _That'd be Iofiel -er, Aleksi?_ Sam thinks. He recalls a scolding for using the angel name not long ago. Angelic memories, he'd been told, did not erase the human life. 

To Crowley's right is the guy that Sam recognizes as Gavin, who seems pretty healthy for a man who shouldn't exist in this timeline.

The three of them are all standing in front of a quaint historical building with a big sign on the front that reads _MAJESTIC HOTEL, CHICAGO._

The letter on the back is as follows, in terribly dramatic penmanship:

 

* * *

 

_To Moose and Squirrel:_

_Hotel haunted. As all three of us are currently susceptible to death, we will be staying elsewhere, however the less risk-adverse (you) are urged to consider a visit._

_-Crowley._

_P.S. Aleksi wanted to say a very belated thanks to Gabriel and "sorry for being a twat", sweets are attached accordingly._

**_P.P.S. DID YOU KNOW CHICAGO IS BLOODY FULL OF MONSTERS?!?_ **

 

* * *

 

 

Sam puts out some of the treats on the kitchen counter for general consumption, and the rest he hides so that Dean can't get to them before the next time Gabriel turns up. He spends the morning tapping away at his laptop, and by the time a "reasonable hour" (as Dean would say) rolls around, he's got a couple leads on the Majestic Hotel problem and packed the car with the likeliest necessities.

Eventually his patience about ends, and Dean's still not awake, so Sam strolls down the hall and raps on Dean's door.

_Tap-tap tatap tap..._

_Knock Knock._

Inside, Sam can hear muffled speech and the rustling of waking. The door is pulled open from the other side, and in the doorway stands Cas, bleary-eyed and tugging one of Dean's t-shirts over his head.

Sam brandishes the postcard and speaks loud enough to get Dean's attention from where he's still belligerently in bed.

"So get this..."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it and felt it was something that could plausibly play out on your TV. I had fun writing it, and welcome any comments. :-)


End file.
